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A New and Hopefully Better Year Awaits…https://thirdeyecinema.wordpress.com/2019/01/17/a-new-and-hopefully-better-year-awaits/
https://thirdeyecinema.wordpress.com/2019/01/17/a-new-and-hopefully-better-year-awaits/#commentsFri, 18 Jan 2019 00:50:08 +0000http://thirdeyecinema.wordpress.com/?p=28557Continue reading →]]>And so another year comes to an end, and by the time your eyes peruse these lines, things will probably have changed more than once again on the personal listening front.

But since we last sat down to chat, the estimable “blue collar” power metal of Brainstorm – a band seldom so celebrated among certain circles as they should be, presumably due to their pointedly darker USPM orientation (and apparent disinclination to tour outside of Europe, if not, to judge by a recent announcement, Central Europe in particular!) has moved easily into my top spot as “go to” power metal these days (a role previously filled, for decades, mind, by Rhapsody).

There are certainly albums that stand above others – I’d say Liquid Monster was the best of the Metal Blade lot, with the All Highs, No Lows collection grabbing pretty much all of the high points of their time with said label…and as noted previously, Midnight Ghost and Firesoul as the undisputed pinnacles of their AFM era to date. Generally speaking, they remain on an upward climb…not something you can often attribute to a band with a long discography! So due respect to Herr Franck and company for that, and hoping for more and even better in the future.

But there’s also been a lot of digging and revisitation going on. Not only has this encompassed multiple repeat performances of previously mentioned albums like Burning Point’s pair of Nitte Valo efforts (both top notch, though the self titled is unquestionably more varied and likeable) and Nightmare’s Dead Sun (really can’t wait to see how they follow that up)…but older albums, like Mob Rules’ Cannibal Nation have really stood the test of time, often sitting head and shoulders over the rest of the lot (both in terms of their own discography and what I’ve been hearing in Euro-school power metal per se).

Perhaps most wonderful have been the “discoveries”, like a post-review reassessment of Dynazty’s Firesign (where I discovered a burgeoning taste for all that hypermelodic Swedish cheese)…or a dig into the basement CD archives which unearthed some forgotten gems: namely, Thunderstone’s Apocalypse Again (which among other merits boasts a very similar vocal approach to Mob Rules’ Cannibal Nation, but with greater polish and melodicism) and a 2 disc box from Voice,* whose Prediction is something of an unsung (if not entirely forgotten!) gem, much akin to Mandrake-era Edguy, but with actual riffs…

* yeah, there’s an unspoken pattern here. While there are a few other labels who’ve dipped (and continue to dip) their toes into the pool, there’s no question, AFM really is the label to hit up when it comes to European power metal.

But all this points to one thing – a huge disparity between good music and…not so good music. There’s always a degree to which these things are subjective, of course. Some folks hate foods that others practically can’t live without, and vice versa. But there’s also a very objective one.

Folks scream and growl because they can’t sing – it’s right there from the horses’ mouths, in hundreds, if not thousands of interviews with bands over the decades. Some genres practically demand that sort of stylized approach – it’d be strange to hear clean vocals over classic death or black metal, without question. But there are so many bands who don’t even try, who think that literally shrieking and screaming their tonsils out is some sort of statement, a cathartic middle finger to the world that they mistakenly believe simply can’t be expressed otherwise.

Or more likely, they just can’t fucking sing.

The problem with listening to good music, with strong, accomplished performances? Is that it often gets harder to give the questionable to bad stuff a pass.*

* see our coverage of Der Rote Milan for more on this matter…

So mild apologies to a few of the more polished, clean vocalled acts last review cycle, who while certainly addressed with the usual mix of objective appraisal, subjective reaction and honesty to the point of bluntness** may have gotten a touch more of a slam than usual.

** or as Pontius Pilate once said, “what I have writ, I have writ.” Selah.

Because when you’re immersed in music that’s not only well done, but that you actually love?

I’m sorry, but “meh” really doesn’t cut it.

MAGIC DANCE – New Eyes (Frontiers Music s.r.l.) (December 7)

The lighter end of early to mid-80’s radio-ready AOR is amply recaptured by this (surprisingly!) New York City act.

Just sit back with tracks like “better things”, and use that new lens to revisit earlier ones like “you’re holding back” and “please wake me”…hell, the better part of the album appends best to Tony Lewis and company’s pleasant mix of light and airy pop with more typically AOR-based guitar crunch.

At the time, the band was viewed as likeable if a tad generic…but that was the mid-80’s. To hear something this smooth and polished, but with enough Casio synthpop keyboard and crunchily overdriven rock guitars in 2018…much less not hailing from the new AOR strongholds of Sweden and Italy?

I’d say they stand out, yeah.

Very likeable stuff, brought me right back to what, for all their flaws and dated tech, were inarguably much better times.

One of the more enjoyable revisitations and reevaluations of this past year or two was that of a certain Graham Bonnett.

Previously seen (at least by yours truly) as a strangely recurrent figure appearing in, then immediately parting ways with, any number of neoclassical shred-based bands, it was something of a revelation to suddenly reach that “aha!” moment, where most if not all of these players and band’s best work (or at least right up there with the best of their respective discographies) turned out to be when this man was fronting them. Hmm…

Well, thankfully, there’s been a recent reissue/remaster campaign going on with Bonnett, where much of his past work (inclusive of some stuff I wasn’t even aware he’d done, namely Forcefield and the Electric Zoo demo) has been brought back into print and up to snuff. And now the missing puzzle piece that was there in front of my face the whole time comes into view.

Now, those expecting the same excitement the man was able to generate with greats like Blackmore and Schenker, Alcatrazz sidemen Malmsteen and Vai or even later compatriots Impelliteri and Shimizu-era Anthem…I’m sorry, but you’ll have to rein in the expectations somewhat.

While this is an all-Alcatrazz based concert (held, quite naturally, for the Japanese diehard faithful who’ve been the main audience of shred uninterruptedly through the decades), the presence of fellow Alcatrazz sidemen Jimmy Waldo (keys) and Gary Shea (bass) only represents half the picture.

The crucial role of covering both Malmsteen and Vai’s pronounced, showy and quite lead-based performances? No, sadly, it’s not Meanwhile, Back in the Garage/Jag Panzer/Shrapnel Records vet Joey Tafolla.

Instead, it’s been entrusted to Graham Bonnett Band six stringer Conrado Pesinato, who is more of the “tries hard and sort of pulls it off if you’re going by rote” level than the world class player working sideman to Bonnett (much less covering the very songs and leads laid down by both Malmsteen and Vai!) demands. You won’t cringe, in other words, but you certainly won’t be wowed either.

If they’d pulled in a stronger six stringer (hell, you’re in Japan, tap Akio Shimizu, or even Marty Friedman!), this could have been amazing. But hey, it is what it is, and that’s a respectable live “reunion” album from a classic 80’s metal band.

As an added incentive to Alcatrazz completists, Bonnett includes a number of studio demos from 1985, of which I believe only “blue boar” and “ohayo Tokyo” made it to their third album (about which most everyone agrees the less said, the better).

Nice surprise: one of these (the ballad “emotion”) is actually a Steve Vai leftover, a ballad with a typical stunner of a solo that (much like his work of this period) evokes his Zappa-era style more than what followed. I won’t say it’s worth getting just for this one track, but hey. You won’t hear this one anywhere else, so far as I’m aware.

Not bad, it’s nice to hear much of the old gang back together and in good form, and that one bonus track offers a bit of a ringer to boot.

And as is Frontiers’ wont, here we have another “meeting of the minds”, gathering the mainmen behind AOR based rock bands both vintage and new.

It’s kind of a thing with the label, sort of like a more melodic radio rock version of Mike Varney’s Shrapnel records (where you’d find the likes of Ron Keel put together with a young Yngwie Malmsteen, shredder Tony MacAlpine working with Ozzy vets Tommy Aldridge and Rudy Sarzo behind Christian rocker and Impelliteri frontman Rob Rock and suchlike), and can result in some amazing material (Racer X being a prime example thereof).

So here you get the frontman of original Dio sidemen Last in Line, Andrew Freeman, together with Streets six stringer Mike Slamer, dropping what comes off like a particularly guitar-heavy take on Loverboy or a grittier, more metallized version of Survivor.

Many of the solos lean towards an almost Van Halenesque style, bringing echoes of both the David Lee Roth band and Roxy Blue to mind, while pursuing an odd sideline in Nashville-style balladeering (“justified”, “unified”) and a nigh-Southern rock bar band thing (“one more time”, “devil’s hand”).

I guess you could excuse it by referencing post-New Jersey Bon Jovi or suchlike, but yeah. It’s not exactly AOR, much less that “corporate rock” (remember that one?) meets Van Halen thing they’ve got going on otherwise.

You’ve got a more than respectable vocalist and a player who obviously knows his shit, here. What else did you need to know?

It works.

PALACE – Binary Music (Frontiers Music s.r.l.) (December 7)

Another album from Michael Palace’s post-First Signal act. We’d covered their Master of the Universe two years back, and appreciated their prominent keyboard work and the man’s own Lou Gramm meets Joey Tempest tones.

Here he seems a tad more raspy than I recall from our last dance, but make no mistake, this is still quite smooth and retro minded material, with those omnipresent keyboards, clean toned guitars that go into a crunchier (but still lightly distorted) overdrive in more uptempo moments…hell, “love songs” practically sounds like something the California Dreams would have played down at Sharkey’s!

Aside from the rather John Schneideresque tone seen on “who’s counting time”, this is more of the light and poppy end of AOR, but as polished, catchy and smoothly melodic as you could ever ask for.

Good enough for me.

Tell Sam I’ll meet her at Sharkey’s in time for the show. Love those Dreams.

STATE OF SALAZAR – Superhero (Frontiers Music s.r.l.) (December 7)

We’d covered these Swedish classic/prog oriented rockers’ All the Way four years back, and most of that assessment remains dead on to what you’ll hear herein: most pointedly, this is Kansas crossed with a bit of Styx, but with elements of Toto and Kevin Cronin-era REO Speedwagon serving as audial garnish.

In other words, it’s heavily keyboard driven (think more piano tone and 70’s prog rock grandiose than the more typical 80’s sound AOR bands gravitate towards nowadays), with backing rhythm guitars that bear enough crunch to sound appropriate (think Survivor or Foreigner) and a smooth, if deeper toned than usual tenor vocal over the top.

Some tracks are absolutely killer (“if you wait for me”, the decidedly Kansaslike “masquerade” and “someone I know”), others are acceptable but much lighter, more akin to Peter Cetera’s solo work than classic Chicago (“love witll find a way”) or vintage Toto (“Joanne”).

Bottom line, it’s smooth, its full of hooks. If you dig vintage AOR and American/Canadian based prog rock of the late 70’s and very early 80’s, you really can’t go wrong with these guys, despite all the lightness of tone those comparatives imply.

Even above and beyond the likeability of the material (of which there is a’plenty) and the confident Bon Joviesque tones of Gioeli himself, “a big portion of the album’s crowdfunding” goes to a newly paralyzed fella’s medical bills. You can look up the details, but it’s a nice gesture, and something of a bonus incentive to those who enjoy the man’s work.

Do we really need to say more about this? You know the man’s voice and previous work, this is in the same ballpark (if not more smooth and 80’s AOR…Bon Jovi regains their debut/7800 Fahrenheit edge, perhaps?), and while the money’s already been collected and donated from the crowdfund crowd, it’s still effectively “sold to help someone out”, if you think about it.

Sure, I liked this well enough. But even so.

If nothing else, it’s nice to hear there are still people who give a damn out there in an increasingly cold world, so yeah. Hats off to ya, brother.

STEELHEART – Rock’n Milan (Frontiers Music s.r.l.) (December 7)

Live album from this early 90’s glam to light metal act.

We’d covered them before, for their Through Worlds of Stardust, and this doesn’t exactly disabuse the impressions given last time around.

If you dig, say, post-Girls Girls Girls Motley Crue (especially the John Corabi album), Jackyl or that Van Halen album Gary Cherone did, you’ll probably love these guys…and the leads are pretty tasty, I have to admit that.

But yeah…while it’s far from “bad”, there’s simply too much of that post-GNR/trying to sound “hard” and grunge thing that far too many metal bands moved to in the early to mid 90’s for my tastes.

A depressively inclined, dark toned cross between the miserable introspection of emo, the overly detuned nu metallish thing you get with doofy bands like Five Finger Death Punch and a more European gothic metal polish, you’d think comparisons to the (in the first and third respects) similarly inclined Vanishing Point would be in order…but no, we weren’t really hearing that.

Just to make things even weirder? They consider themselves prog metal. Say huh? Nope, not hearing that at all...

Well, here, Evergrey may have taken a baby step forward in that general direction, with an almost AOR to Nashville inclination towards radio ready choruses, arguably cleaner toned vocals from frontman Tom Englund and more use of keyboards.

About the only thing that could be considered “prog” here is the use of somewhat generic stutter rhythms, forcing the drummer to syncopate his timing and phrasing on a semi-regular basis…but the usual trappings of the genre, from soaring vocals to wheedly-whoo solos to almost jazzy riffing and rhythms simply aren’t there.

There’s no link to acts like Queensryche, Crimson Glory or Fates Warning on one hand, or the Dream Theater school on the other. Hell, this doesn’t even connect with “classic prog rock” (think anything from ELP to Rush, from Cherry Red/Goblin to Styx and Saga here)…this is just dark, Prozac-baiting modern metal with overly detuned guitars that never get particularly flashy.

But taken in and of itself, as if Evergrey’s Currents were an island disconnected from the entirety of the musical ocean and biosphere they naturally inhabit, what you get is listenability.

Even with the detuned guitars chugging about rather aimlessly, even with Englund’s so depressed I can barely get out of bed vocal inflections…it’s far smoother than any of the emo or nu metal nonsense the band seems to draw so much from, spiritually. While it’s hardly what I’d consider “prog”, it’s not a million miles removed from gothic metal, occupying some odd one man variant thereof all its own.

In the end, Evergrey is what you choose to make of ’em, and what you choose to take from ’em. I’m seeing a bit more smoothness, a bit more melodicism creeping into the equation…so while I’d hardly put these guys on a list of must hear acts, they’re certainly melodic, acceptably competent players, and bear the appropriate degree of studio polish.

And that’s a lot more than you can say about any number of releases that come across the virtual desk, so take that as a plus.

Flotsam And Jetsam – The End Of Chaos (AFM Records) (January 18)

We’d covered these Arizona thrashers’ self titled comeback album a few years back, and found them a very different beast than where yours truly left off with them, around their Newsted-less No Place for Disgrace (itself a bit of a step down from Doomsday for the Deciever, still a regular go-to when I’m looking to air out the thrash).

The pluses about that album, to sum up in brief, were that Eric A.K. and Mike Gilbert were back in tow, alongside Sentinel Beast alum Mike Spencer, with good riffing and even better leads. And while hardly the high flying, soaring vocalist he was in his prime, Eric could still throw down an acceptable performance on the mic. In other words, it wasn’t bad at all.

So what happens when you take the same trio and tag in notable session drummer Ken Mary (Impelliteri, Chastain, Fifth Angel)…and then light an actual fire under their ass?

Holy shit, the riffs on this one!

Seriously…if the self titled was a respectable comeback attempt by some veteran thrashers…this one is their attempt (and to a certain extent, success) at recapturing their Doomsday/Disgrace heyday.

I mean…it’s like pulling out Unleashed circa As Yggdrasil Trembles and Odalheim. Sure, this may not be Where No Life Dwells or Shadows in the Deep…but are you gonna file it alongside ’em and play it pretty damn regularly? You bet.

Then you sort of know what to expect here: respectable if not exactly world shaking leads and riffs. Production feels a bit raw, pointing to either a vinyl source for the mastering or a bit too much of that early Ratt thin n’ gritty tone on the guitars.

It’s certainly acceptable and familiar to vets and fans of the era this hails from (the man went right from the ’87 self titled to this one-off), but may sound a bit overly hollow, mids-friendly and prone to scratchiness and signal bleed on the higher register for those more accustomed to today’s often more crystalline and polished production style (particularly when it comes to the likes of power metal or prog).

As for the music itself…think to yourself, “gee, what if Mr. Big had actual riffs?” Yep, it’s that sort of big chorused, gritty/”bluesy” vocal driven act, but with far more attention to the riff and even leads than that all star act seemed willing to deliver (which was and remains the single most irritating thing about that band, particularly in its debut, when we all expected Racer X meets David Lee Roth, not Kings X Jr…)

In fact, you could draw a fairly even line between The Final Frontier and Cold Sweat (the ’87 album was too bombastic and glammy by comparison)…so it’s clear this is Ferrari’s baby. Even so, it’s pretty typical of the type, not really standing out from the crowd despite all its merits and intrinsic likeability.

Bottom line, if you like where mainstream metal (or as they rebrand a lot of these acts nowadays, “hard rock/AOR”) was going circa ’89-’90 right before the precipitous fall that grunge represented, you should be pretty happy to see this relative obscurity unearthed – and viewed in terms of “unexpected catalogue finds”, this one’s pretty damn solid.

This is a very light, melodic prog rock, somewhere between Supertramp and Asia, with moments that lean a bit Styx…that’s about as hard n’ heavy as things get. Nothing wrong with it if you’re in the mood for something theatrically dramatic, but it’s hardly Queen either, nor is it as cosmic consciousness trippy as Yes, King Crimson or as willfully deep as Kansas.

In other words, these guys sound like a typical ProgPower mid-card act, polished and melodic enough to win over the sort of crowd that grooves on this stuff but not driving, busy or distinct enough to really stand out among the big guns.

Nothing to complain about here…but it’s on you to find something more effusive in material so respectably middle of the road.

Emigrate – A Million Miles (Spinefarm Records) (November 30)

hmm.

Richard Z. Kruspe, guitarist for the much famed industrial act Rammstein, steps out for this far more diverse and unusual side project.

Now, to be fair, there are elements of electronic/industrial at play herein as well…but is it Rammstein, Jr.? Not even close.

Particularly interesting are the tracks where he uses other singers, like the pop-punk of “1234” and the gothic pop of “lead you on”, but Kruspe takes things to weird places, like the CW tween drama friendly neo-Nashville cum emo of “you are so beautiful”, the early millenial punkish stomp of “hide and seek” or the ersatz synthpop of “let’s go”, which pulls in his Rammstein compatriot Till Lindemann on vocals.

Clearly a very different animal than what you’ll hear from his main gig, Emigrate shows another, more youthfully eclectic side of the industrial six stringer.

Whether you find it charming or a shrug of the shoulders is pretty much down to how much sentimental attachment you have to Crazy Taxi and the early days of bands like Blink 182, Good Charlotte and Green Day, really.

Venom – Storm the Gates (Spinefarm Records) (December 14)

My introduction to Venom came with the all too brief American Assault, and boy, did they have the right number with that one.

I mean, it was unfortunate to leave the second side exclusively live, but for “rip ride”, “bursting out” and “Countess Bathory” alone, that was one hell of an introduction…honestly, one that the albums themselves couldn’t live up to. Hell, “bursting out” was, and in many versions of the original trilogy floating around out there, still is, exclusive to some obscure single/EP otherwise!

But over the decades, it became apparent that this was a band more informed by hype and image than substance, who had a surprising number of catchy, punkish tracks buried in the mud of detuned bass and a whole lot of…lesser tracks.

Yeah, it’s easy to say “stick to Welcome to Hell, Black Metal and At War with Satan”, but even there, there’s quite a bit of fat to be trimmed…and more than a few killer tracks in absentia that need to be added on as bonus tracks (depending on which label or version you managed to grab). Any way you slice it, the one thing nearly everyone agrees on is that come ’87, their run of worth was good and over, kill the heat, they are done.

So band members came and went, there were solo albums and Inc.’s and all sorts of happy horseshit, with Cronos and company celebrated more for their early 80’s material and greeted with eye rolls and snickers for anything and everything since. Oh, yeah, those guys. Great stuff, back in ’83! Still play the hell out of Black Metal, eh?

All that to skip over a lot (a lot!) of years and albums really not worth discussing, to bring us a whopping 38 years on from their storied debut (if you can believe that!)…and you know what? This album’s fairly respectable.

Is it classic Venom? Pfft. Seriously?

But is it recognizable as some ersatz variant of where they might have gone after Possessed, back around ’86 or 7?

Interestingly? Yes…

Will you catch me making some major stink out of this album? No, come on. Seriously. It’s surprisingly good, but not an amazing work for the ages or anything.

But will I give it a due nod of respect as an album filled with crusty production, vintage riffs, a mix of thrash and patented Venom sonic mush with gargled vocals about dark things?

You bet. Don’t call it a comeback…but it might as well be.

Plague Years – Unholy Infestation (Seeing Red Records) (January 4)

Crunchy, chugging Slayer meets Exodus by way of Vio-Lence-like riffs that clearly spell thrash in big neon letters…but with enough aggression and Morrisoundesque feel to leave you wondering if this wasn’t bordering on death metal.

Even the whammy bar-waggling solos and use of reverb thereon are successful in recreating that vintage sound…

…too bad about that ridiculous Sludgelord Records-style fat flannel wearing guy bellowing and spitting crumbs of his Manwich all over the front row vocalist!

Drop that dope and find a proper thrash frontman, these guys would be a five star proposition. So yeah. The rest of ya in the band? You know exactly what to do.

Someone needs to invent a personal mixer for iPods and portable devices. Just wipe that vocal track entirely and enjoy an otherwise totally killer band.

Beyond Creation – Algorythm (Season of Mist) (October 12)

French-Canadian progressive death metal. Bears some degree of lineage to Agressor, whose Rebirth was recently re-recorded and reissued.

The main difference is that Agressor was trying, at least at that point in their career, to move into something more symphonic and orchestral (in a way)…and there’s simply none of that at play herein.

Instead, what you get is a pointedly proggy, overly busy legato lead line wending its way through each and every track, more often than not serving as the de facto “riff”. The production’s clean, the vocals are standard (if overly generic and unimpressive), the drumming is busy and syncopated.

There’s really nothing bad to say about these guys – if you dig the style, you should be well chuffed by such a polished presentation thereof.

My own tastes in death metal are more traditionalist and hail from a few years prior to this particular sound’s invention.

Crippled Black Phoenix – Great Escape (Season of Mist) (September 14)

Justin Greaves, briefly sticksman for Electric Wizard (he appeared on We Live) brings his (literal) major depression to this long running, member grist mill-churning project.

Be warned, most of this album is glacially paced, with minimally instrumented half song length ambient to darkwave “intros” that eventually give way to more of a midtempo full band…well, is it really still darkwave at that point?

Picture your typical black ambient album with strong overtones of Lycia, turning into a cross between Ian MacCulloch and Nick Drake, vocally speaking, tag in occasional guitars, and you’ll get the general idea. I guess you could call them the bastard sons of Lycia as shorthand, but that implies something far more lush and engagingly expansive than Crippled Black Phoenix appears to have in their musical armory. That general ballpark, though.

Best track by leaps and bounds: “times, they are a’raging”, which is the closest to an actual song as you’ll get here. The rest, you have to have the patience of a saint to sit through, much less appreciate.

Unless you’re morbidly depressed, perhaps…in which case, this may resonate with your inner despair far more than it ever could to folks on more of an unimpaired emotional spectrum.

Hate Eternal – Upon Desolate Sands (Season of Mist) (October 26)

Erik Rutan, the guy I remember for Ripping Corpse and the rest of ya know for a brief run with post-Covenant (and hence post- any real interest) Morbid Angel, brings those crunchy Disincarnate-meets-Morbid Angel riffs to the table alongside some believable but passable death metal vox (also provided by the man himself) for what is apparently the seventh album from his “new” act Hate Eternal.

There’s not much else to say about this one, really – Morbid Angel riffs (or if you’re an old diehard, Ripping Corpse riffs with a bit of Morbid and a bit more of Disincarnate mashed together for extra spice) with throaty gargle-growls and half Phil Sandoval, half blastbeat bullshit drums.

When the blasts go away, sticksman Hannes Grossman sounds pretty damn accomplished for someone who sounds about to go off the rails throughout…but damn, you have to drop that ridiculous nod to black metal, guy. Eschew the blastbeat, you have the footwork down and a whole kit to play with! Use ’em!

Yeah, it’s a bit too busy and pissed off for my tastes – this is that buzzing bees “technical/brutal” sound that seems to have taken over (proper, non-blackened) death metal in recent years – but it’s certainly listenable, sounds pretty difficult to play and at core, feels “true”. So consider any complaints here comparatively minor.

But if this is your thing, if you’re still jonesing on Dreaming With the Dead and Dreams of the Carrion Kind, with more than just a hint of Morbid Angel tagged in to boot?

When they’re on point (“think twice”, “antitype”, the title cut, arguably even “shipwreck”), bears all the oddball guitar structures and interplay, depressive CW tween drama vibe and youthfully whiny vocals mixed with earworm hooks and melodic choruses you’d expect.

Oddly, though, the band chooses to break with traditional form more often than not, leaning closer to a less engaging, more standard rock as parsed through an indie filter – all major keys and quirk without much to draw the listener in (about the best things get for the listener is the oddly over-technical “mind over matter”, which practically leans into Unexpect territory.)

It seems strange to encourage a band to “go more emo!”, but here it seems appropriate. Because “think twice” and “antitype” stand so head and shoulders above the rest of the material here as to feel practically anomalous.

Trapped Under Ice Vol. 1: The New Face of Canadian Heavy Metal (Temple of Mystery) (January 25)

Odd compilation of Canadian metal acts.

What’s odd about it is that while everything here is pretty damn listenable (hell, even quite likeable!), this all feels like vintage 1983, somewhere between the just fading spectre of the NWOBHM and the newly rising “speed metal” (some bands of which would soon fall under the umbrella of thrash, others later absorbed into the larger, often more divisive label of US power metal).

Sure, great stuff, if you like your metal vintage and a bit off the beaten track…but in 2018? This feels oddly out of place, some long lost archaism dredged up from earlier days, rather than a sampling of up and comers (and it is, being marketed as exclusively “new young bands” you’ve likely never heard of.)

Hey, you won’t catch me complaining.

Hails to our brothers up North!

TYTUS – Rain After Drought (Fighter Records) (January 8)

Speaking of which, here’s an Italian band who similarly draws inspiration, riffs and stylistic cues exclusively from vintage traditional metal, NWOBHM and early thrash.

Definitely the sort of act you’d expect to hear on a Greek label (there are at least three working nigh exclusively in the realm of long lost and obscure power, trad and NWOBHM reissues…a true stronghold of classic metal, that nation), these new kids (vintage 2017, if you can believe that) drop some quirky cross between classic Maiden, Heavy Load…and as noted in the promo writeup, Slough Feg, but with a definite thrash base informing every riff.

Same assessment as the Trapped Under Ice comp…it’s actually hard to believe all this is coming from a young act.

Due nod of respect, and another one this month well worth looking into.

EXCALIBUR – Generación Maldita (Fighter Records) (December 12)

Reissue of an oddly rare debut from these Spanish rockers, whose Humo Negro we’d reviewed a few years back, and again, they deliver the same vintage 80’s AOR/hair metal, complete with high vocal screams, big hair photos and keyboards.

Being a Spanish act with (presumably, at the time) little funding or support, it’s not really surprising that the album is a bit rough around the edges, sounding closer to an old WSOU Street Patrol demo (Torra, Cleavage or American Angel, anyone?) than the more polished likes of, say, Cinderella, Bon Jovi or Hurricane they so obviously emulate.

Interestingly, the band tags on two extra tracks intended for the original release but left off due to budget (shades of The Final Sign of Evil!), and these only stand out from the original album by dint of a stronger, bolder production style. The playing and vocals aren’t all that far removed from the rest of the material, even at a full 30 years remove…which says a lot. Hats off, amigos.

There’s also a welcome second disc of mostly demo material, filled out by a 1990 2 track EP and some 1991 vintage live tracks. Rougher sound, but good stuff, and many tracks not represented on the album proper.

This sort of lighter, big hair-sporting Hollywood style, AOR-bordering metal may not be everyone’s cup of tea, particularly in today’s more dark and aggressive milieu…and sure, even those who love the stuff may balk at the lack of polish of most of the material presented herein.

But if you like the stuff and are open to and forgiving of the financial and recording limitations that are so often part and parcel of the international metal scene? You could do a whole hell of a lot worse than these vintage rockers.

LORD DIVINE – Facing Chaos (Fighter Records) (February 5)

Argentinian prog act, with a frontman who crosses the clean vocals of the European prog/power metal scene with Dio-esque growls ala Helker’s Diego Valdez.

We’d covered these Danes’ recent Contingent and more importantly to the album under the spotlight tonight, Melancholy Beast, which featured original vocalist Lance King.

Now, I’m given to understand there were internal issues leading to King’s ousting from the band…which is two bad for several reasons, one of which is the first two albums (namely Melancholy Beast and this very album, Legend of the Bone Carver) falling out of print, as they were released under King’s own label. So at least that issue is now rectified courtesy of Inner Wound, who have brought these two back into circulation under their umbrella.

Sadly, what remains lost is King himself, who delivers a far more appropriate prog metal vocal, somewhere along the lines of Michael Kiske crossed with Michael Eden, with just a hint of the dramatic delivery of Roy Khan (mind, we’re talking phrasing here, nothing more).

It’s too bad that this more suitably fronted Pyramaze remains a thing of the past (nothing against the new guy, but Chris Cornell stylings and progressive power metal do not mesh especially well…), but at least we have these albums in print again, with all their polish, production and power to move the listener.

Sorta pop-punk, but with a much stronger inclination towards the former than the latter.

Overall, it’s a pretty straightforward if not simplistic affair, as if someone crossed The Donnas with Paramore or something.

Six stringer Moa Lenngren seems to have a thing for steel slide, a strange affectation which appears more often than you’d ever expect on an album of this sort…did she think she was auditioning for a Badlands reunion or something?

Look, it’s listenable enough and will probably appeal to a certain sector of the youth market (you know, the kind that gravitates to bands like Good Charlotte or Halestorm), but when the best track on display is “thank God it’s Friday”, you have to set the bar a bit lower than you’d initially planned…

Not exactly hard on the eyes, and probably won’t hurt your ears much either.

So here’s the twist. These guys don’t just do that or pull in the expected “guests you’ll recognize” (in this case, the big gun being Mike LePond of Symphony X, who seems to get around quite a bit, alongside bandmate Michael Romeo), but actually consist of two “female opera vocalists” and a “male opera vocalist”…and none of them are the lead singer.

Now, before we get to that, we should mention that there’s not a whole lot of operatic singing going on…and we’re being suitably generous and including the sort of “operatic” that you expect from gothic/symphonic metal here, as in Liv Kristine, Floor Janssen, early Simone Simons, that sort of thing. Some on the ladies’ end, for sure…but there’s more midrange singing and sprechtgesang of “the libretto” going down than actual hitting of ye olde high notes, so to speak.

But the guy? No excuses, he’s just pulling a Fernando Ribiero (or hell, even a Pete Steele). Nothing wrong with an overdramatic baritone prone to speaking lyrically and only occasionally breaking into song…but never once does he do anything bombastic, operatic or requiring him to raise his voice much above Prozac-driven smacking of the contact mic with his lips. Sure, it’ll pass for “male fronted gothic metal” or even “gothic doom” of a certain variety…but operatic? Please.

So OK, you ask…if none of those folks are being considered as “the vocalist”…where the hell is that person?

oy.

yeah, you guessed it. He’s the growler.

(long, stony visaged pause for dramatic effect)

…yeah.

So…what do we have here? Another overdramatic symphonic/prog act, going beyond the bounds of “concept album” to a self described “opera”, without any real operatic vocals (and precious few gothic/symphonic “operatically inclined” ones, either!) and a guy growling and belching at you as the frontman.

Even conceptually, it’s a bit of a mess…

Next?

THE HEARD – The Island (Despotz) (December 14)

HAHAHAHA!!!

…well, you have to laugh when the promo writeup describes these ladies (and one rather Marilyn Manson-looking gent) as “a trio of former Crucified Barbara members, Skinny Disco from Deathstars and, well, a burlesque performer named Pepper.”

No idea if any of that means a thing to the rest of ya, but the last line alone…shaking my head and still laughing, here…

Well, the sound is very much a stripped down, doomy “occult rock” sort of thing, somewhat akin to a female fronted Hour of 13, but with more poppy hooks to their credit.

Oh, and that “burlesque performer”? She’s the frontwoman.

Be warned, calling this “doom” or even “occult rock inclined” is much akin to calling Concrete Blonde a goth act, just because they had a few dark Anne Rice-inspired tracks on Bloodletting.

Now this was an interesting surprise…certainly not what you’d expect from photos of what looks like a bunch of grease monkey types in bowling shirts (well, two of ’em, anyway…the other guy looks like Phil Anselmo and seems to dig bootleg Motorhead shirts or some shit)!

No, instead, you get some pretty dead on European power metal with an almost AOR-level catchy chorus. It’s like the more memorable 70’s glam and early 80’s radio rock, just sung in Russian and prone to give way to some killer riffage (check out “moonlight night”) or straight up power metal at the drop of a hat. Maybe with a little funk, and a disturbing degree of inappropriate acoustic instrumentation…think along the lines of ukeleles and banjos here.

Personally, I’d prefer they kept things closer to the straight up power metal template, as they do on the title cut, “only the wind”, “the time has come” and the aforementioned ringer, “moonlight night”. Hell, if they all sounded like that track, they’d have gotten a five star review here!

Sadly, that’s not the case, but proves the exception to the rule set by this album…one which, it must be said, bears a whole hell of a lot of promise between its covers.

Thick Russian accents, goofy dress sense and all.

VVORSE – Ajatus vapaudesta (Inverse Records) (December 5)

We’d covered this supposed “hardcore”/crust act once before, for Nakyja Helvetista, and were bemused at how straight up aggro managed to get itself rebranded as “hardcore” (as if this had anything whatsoever in common with the likes of Minor Threat and the Bad Brains…).

Not that anyone was really expecting it, but there’s been no appreciable change. All screamo bullshit on the vocal end, all dark, brooding, almost black/death drone riffing on the guitars, drums that alternate between sounding like they have nothing to do with the rest of the band and the sort of thing you used to hear with early South American blackthrash.

I don’t know, maybe so much of this shit comes across the virtual desk, you start getting inured to it, but this one sounded strangely more listenable if not palatable than they did last time around.

Go figure.

I wouldn’t take it as a ringing endorsement, though.

Laid Back Townies – II (Inverse Records) (December 14)

What would you get if you took some of the feel of stoner rock, crossed it with a slightly bluesy Southern rock vibe, then hired the Spin Doctors to record the thing?

You guessed it, Laid Back Townies, an occasionally sub Hendrix-funky, vaguely blues rock take on a 90’s style, indie-ish Southern rock act out of Finland.

The influences here are pretty clear, and it boggles the mind how they’re being marketed as “progressive” roots rock, when it’s far more of what we’re alluding to and describing herein. Prog? Where the hell is anyone hearing that?

I guess if you always wanted to hear Robert Cray and Jeff Healey going full on CoC to Black Label Society, but with a bit of the Spin Doctors thrown in for good measure, you may well get pretty damn excited about this one.

To these ears, at the very best it’s acceptably workaday.

Wolfhorde – Hounds of Perdition (Inverse Records) (January 11)

And here’s a band marketing themselves as “folk metal”, but bearing
precious little in common with the likes of Skyclad or Elvenstorm. Hell,
they’re not even pagan/Viking metal…at first.

What you’ll actually hear is a surprisingly well produced, crisp sounding
symphonic black metal (or symphonic black/death) that takes a ridiculous four songs in to a seven song album before it finally breaks into more clean singing and pronouncedly power metallish phrases that lilt and bounce, with the expected traditional/acoustic instrumentation.

So yeah, half of this album is actually folk metal. But you’ll have to sit through all the belching, gargling and symphonic black style sonic template of “hounds of perdition”, “chimera” and “doctor of the plague” before you even get there!

When they finally hit their groove and develop their own sound, it’s not
too bad…and the production’s pretty damn skippy all the way through.

But when you say “folk metal”, I’m not expecting to hear fucking Behemoth.

Are they thrash with a Panteralike aggro orientation (“korpi metal riders”)? Glam to AOR (the title cut)? Pagan/folk (“kaiho”)? Power metal (“phantom lands”, “phoenix daimonion”)? A cross between the last two, ala Elvenking (“the oaken passage”)?

Who the hell knows…the band themselves obviously don’t.

At least the guitar tone is crunchy, the sound is lush, the production’s
decent…and when a given track works, it works pretty damn well.

Just don’t expect consistency, or even a proper genre to file this
under.

The Sabbathian – Latum Alterum (Svart Records) (January 25)

Curious but quite likeable affair that comes off much akin to the
doomier, more trancelike end of black metal. “Evig hvile – libera me”
felt somewhere between a Burzum track and Clandestine Blaze…but
with the sirenlike soprano vocals of a Midnattsol or Myrkur.

Just to make the Midnattsol parallels more pronounced, Liv Kristine
herself is tapped for one track, which would appear to be “liti
kjersti” (though “head of a traitor” works a very similar territory, vocally
speaking…your call which).

As Chad Davis from Hour of 13 is half of this project, you may think
you know what to expect, but this actually comes off both darker and
more hypnotic thanks to Annette Guldbrandsen’s heavily toned
soprano leading the way through thick foggy marsh into dark mysteries.

Very straightforward and simplistic on one hand…but very, very good.

Lazer Angel – Soul Exchange 7″ (Ektro / Full Contact) (February 1)

Jussi Lehtisalo of the frequently reviewed Circle (and solo efforts Spectrum
and the now misleadingly titled Complete Solo Works is back again, this time as the silent partner of a “synthwave” duo with someone named Bruce Duff (who handles vocals).

The sound here is quite reminiscent of the more “outside” and slightly avant-garde end of the early to mid 80’s synthpop scene – think earlier OMD, Ultravox or Human League, before they became top 40 hitmakers…or perhaps more to the point, Cabaret Voltaire.

Even so, there’s a clear bridge between experimental synthesizer work and catchy (if often vapid) pop tunes built therefrom ala Depeche Mode and the like…and that’s exactly what Lazer Angel is doing their damnedest to replicate herein.

If, like myself, your idea of Berlin is Pleasure Victim, your ideal Simple Minds Sons and Fascination, the true Spandau Ballet that of Journeys to Glory…then you should also find this all too brief single right up your alley.

Spektator – 1 (Ruton Music / Ektro) (January 18)

And here Lehtisalo joins forces with another partner, Tomi Leppänen, this time losing all affectations towards melody and retro-pop tuneage in favor of quirky electronic experimentation for its own sake.

Another Circle vet, whose There’s a Passage brought Bruce Cockburn to mind, to some definite appreciation.

Here Westerlund sounds more particularly depressed, a raspy, warbling voiced figure more reminiscent of Tom Waits crossed with latter day Bob Dylan in all its lived-in defeated tiredness.

Expect a whole hell of a lot of mandolin and a very…almost zydeco or bluegrass feel, but without all the joie de vivre. This comes off almost bluesy, and very, very spare.

I can’t say I really liked this one…but it certainly sets a mood, and bears a reasonably authentic feel that an earlier generation looked to aging bluesmen to express and vicariously experience.

Aavikko – Monopoly (Ektro) (February 15)

Holy shit, the promo materials on this one kick off discussing the dialectics of spiritualism or some such bullshit. Wow…hats off for really going for the gusto, there!

So, anyway, here we have a Finnish synthpop act who has nothing whatsoever to do with the aforementioned.

In fact, this is less “synthpop” proper, with all its implications of retro 80’s postpunk and neo-goth, baritone vocalled dark synthesizer worship…and far more the sort of krautrock 70’s/very early 80’s electronic that the early rap scene picked up on and used in crafting their art naif…Afrika Bambaataa being one of the first and most prominent to bring this distinctly European sound to breakdancing B-boys in the streets.

At points, there’s even a line crossed where all this propulsive retro synth and drum machine begins to morph into what served as the post-disco “dance music” scene of the era, from the polyrhythms of Shannon to the extended 12″ club mixes of everything from Real Life and Erasure to Madonna.

It’s all very familar, and all very much of the same era…but always skirting the outside of the circle generally thought of as synthpop.

This music was intended for one thing, and one thing only…so get your back up off the wall, get out on the lighted floor and dance.

The vocals and something about their quirky approach to dark, vague sociopolitical commentary speak to a very obvious Residents influence (if you can believe that!), but “machine of constant sorrow” has far more of a danceable groove, modulations and changes and a general palatabilty that “armageddon time” simply lacks, both completely and utterly.

Well worth checking out “machine”, no question.

I’d think long and hard before dropping a dime on the other one, though.

Hell, you could take that 99c and buy a Jolly Rancher or something, and walk away feeling “money well spent.”

Can’t say the same about “armageddon time”.

OGRE & Dallas Campbell – All Hallows’ II (January 25)

You know, for all the seriously fucked up shit going on in the
world…you know, Trump, Brexit, global warming and an increase in
weather related major disasters, Trump, Putin and the return of global
fascism AND communism as two heads of the same hydra serpent,Trump…

…there are a few unexpectedly good things about being around for the
dark days of 2018. One of ’em is the apparent rapid rise of synthpop,
postpunk/darkwave and synthwave, a revisitation to aspects of the 80’s
seldom touched on since the latter end of that very decade (the all too
brief mid-to-late 90’s US based gothic rock second wave aside).

I mean, seriously, who ever expected bands trying to sound like
Depeche Mode, Flock of Seagulls and Gary Numan again…much less
John Carpenter and latter career Goblin and their Italian horror score
ilk?

So we come to one of the…well, certainly latest, but further
more likeably dark entries in the latter subgenre, sounding for all the
world like another score to Zombie 5: Killing Birds, The Rat Man or
some late Fulci epic.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but I spent the late 90’s and early
millenium digging into the world of the Italian genre film soundtrack, so
this is decidedly right up my personal musical alley.

There are others we’ve covered, both in prior months and even herein
that play in a very similar ballpark, but this is certainly one of the higher
quality and more “authentic sounding” entries, particularly if the whole
Casio driven Italian horror (or hell, even to some extent, American
SOV!) soundtrack thing is your go to.

I was certainly good with this one.

100 Watt Vipers – Holy Water (June 15)

With a mission statement like this, you get a pretty good idea what 100 Watt Vipers are going to sound like:

“…about the struggles of the working class man. It’s about working hard, trying to live with honor, feeding the family, and getting beaten down again and again, but always getting up. No matter how weary and tired he becomes, he always gets back up.”

As you might expect from that, this is some raw, rough and ready hard rock n’ roll, all Marshall stack with the distortion jacked up and gravelly, whiskey soaked bar band style vox. It’s like someone crossed Bon Scott era AC/DC, Thin Lizzy and Molly Hatchet, then soaked ’em good and dry with rotgut gin, stuck ’em in front of a mic and hit record.

About the mellowest they get is when they start working slide guitar
and dobro, and that just makes ’em sound like a more blue collar take
on Moody/Mardsen era Whitesnake or Badlands.

Your “classic rock” station is for pussies. This is how rock n’ roll’s supposed to be played.

Well, here you could argue he’s trying for Udo Dirkschneider, given the very Acceptlike riffing, leads and gang backing choruses…but he still comes off somewhere between Dirty Looks’ Henrik Ostergard and Jason McMaster circa Dangerous Toys…and Cinderella wannabes Britny Fox.

If you can get past the comical shrieking that implies, you’ll find, much as with the aforementioned acts, a very strong band strangely complemented by, and simultaneously held back by, those very same weird-ass vocals.

You already know I like these guys…a lot.

Just an advance single, looking forward to the full album.

ASMODÉE – Aequilanx (Battlesk’rs Productions) (December 6)

Mysterious French black metal four piece, who only released one demo before going their separate ways to little or no acclaim.

This lone demo has been resurrected as a rather aggressive relic of
the late 90’s French black metal scene…at least that which existed
apart from the more celebrated Les Legions Noires.

As that statement hints at, Asmodee is unusual in a few respects, not
least in its rather non-French feel. There’s zero avant garde or
experimental leanings to be found herein, nor do they bear the general
sonic template of their more famed and contemporaneous Legions –
the likes of Vlad Tepes and Mutiilation operate in a very different
manner, and tap into far more obsure corners of the subsceptible
psyche.

Instead, Asmodee comes off more like a Norwegian band, arguably
leaning towards Norsecore…the later work of Judas Iscariot, while far
more polished, similarly carries the sort of attention to speed and
aggression while maintaining a sufficient degree of sinister
atmosphere. Being a more raw, unpolished demo affair, Asmodee
may actually come off better than Iscariot, oddly enough married to the
sort of weirdly hollow yet prominent drum sound of Gorgoroth’s Under
the Sign of Hell.

Is this a long forgotten, unearthed gem of 90’s French black metal?
Well, admittedly, that’s a bit of a stretch.

But I’d hazard a tentative “yes, perhaps so.”

Certainly sounded right to these ears, and will be staying on the iPod
for a bit.

Hellnite – “Midnight Terrors” (Sliptrick Records) (September 25)

An old school drumroll and march tempo guitar intro, and already the ol’ jaw dropped in appreciation. Yeah, I can tell we’re in better hands than usual, here.

There’s more than a dash of power metal to be found in tracks like “warriors of hell” or “holy or unholy”, while others feed more on Bay Area-style thrash and a Helloween inspired “speed metal” (“antichrist”, the title cut), but always with an “evil” vibe that falls somewhere between, say, Desaster and Satan’s Host (“the worshipers of evil”, for example).

Is it truly blackthrash? Well…no, not really. At least not as the style is generally defined, or the bands of various hotspot nations (Germany, Brazil, the US and Central America) that tend to gravitate to and be defined thereby.

But is it a strangely blackened, almost idiosyncratic approach to thrash and “speed” (with a dash of European power metal for good measure)?

Yeah. Didn’t exactly love this one…but it has its moments if you’re so inclined.

Of Hatred Spawn – S/T (Boonsdale Records) (December 21)

Former members of Annihilator and Skull Fist join forces with a guy who walks around with the nickname “Coldcuts”.

I’ll pause, so you can let that one sink in.

…

SO! Anyway…

It’s death metal, though not exactly as “old school” as the band intends. The music’s too busy, the drumming’s too often marred by blastbeats, the vocals too often raw and snarly…about the best you could say is that they were listening to too much Suffocation and Cannibal Corpse and not enough of the remainder of the R/C (and to a lesser extent, Earache) Records roster.

That noted, it’s more listenable…and therefore more “old school” in orientation than much of what passes for death metal of late, with plenty of midtempo breaks and Obituary-esque “groove” sections (what we used to call the “mosh break” back in the day).

But that’s about all that can really be said here. It’s listenable, and more inclined to the older, far superior form(s) of the genre than all too many acts nowadays…

I mean, the title track actually kicks off with a phrase or two with the pick being hammered against the fretboard, Zappa-style…when’s the last time you’ve heard that particular technique? Then there’s those Arabian minor runs that bring early Exodus or later Testament to mind…but it’s 99% vintage Hammett, all killer, no filler.

Sadly, the vox leave something to be desired – like that asshole from Sadus without all the girly-man shrieking (seriously, what was he, some tween little sister shrieking delightedly at a pajama party over boy band videos? Fucking band was unlistenable, entirely down to the shit vocals…). So no, this guy doesn’t shriek at all (thank God!) but has the same sort of high, whiny tone. Not unlistenable, but pretty bad.

Now on to the riffs. Geez, were there any? Hmm…sort of, and they’re at least trying for more of a vintage tone and vibe, I’ll give ’em that much. But generic, forgettable…and while certainly in the right ballpark, ultimately kinda boring. Hellnite this is not.

So what are we left with? A band with really good, old school Kirk Hammett style solos (with elements of other primo thrash players’ styles tacked on for good measure)…and not much else to back that up.

Damn shame…these guys should join forces with Paolo Belmar and make one killer supergroup.

His riffs and their leads, with the more passable Tom G. Warrior swipe vox he further brings to the table?

Now THAT I’d pay to hear.

Make no mistake, has a lot of promise despite the aforementioned flaws…and I seriously loved all those leads.

Goblinsmoker – Toad King (Sludgelord Records) (December 14)

Electric Wizard-school stoner doom, with sludge elements.

Strangely, vocals are heavily reverbed black metal shrieks, which was just…bizarre, but don’t let that hold you back. Someone had the good sense to bury them well beneath the riffs and drums, and to keep ’em to a bare minimum to boot.

So yeah, to the extent we can ignore that bit (and trust me, it’s pretty easy to, the way this was recorded and mixed)? This one’s right up the ol’ stoner doom alley.

Good stuff. Just never change your producer or engineer…making those silly vox more audible or prominent would result in a very different verdict.

Unendlich – Misanthropic Sedition (December 14)

Oy, a Dissection cover? Yawn…and it’s a pretty bad one, besides!

Okay, let’s just forget that track ever existed. What we have here is a poorly vocalled one man black metal band (with drummer)…

…whoops, what’s that?

Sure enough, the guy throws us a curveball, dropping clean, sorta smarmy lounge club gothicized vocals on ya in the middle of “already dead”. But as weirdly amusing as that track therefore becomes, the rest holds to the same pattern described earlier.

There’s an almost unrecognizable Cure cover as well, but in the end, the only thing worthy of attention here is the spotlight grabbing “look at me!” approach of drum for hire Anthony Rouse, who goes all Under the Sign of Hell with his weirdly overly prominent, somewhat off kilter performance on the skins.

It’s not “wow, this is good!” so much as “hmm…this guy’s oddly mugging for the cameras and trying to steal the scene from the ostensible star…”, but fair enough. You’ll definitely notice him, one way or the other.

And that’s more than you can say for our one man band, with his subpar snarly-vox, oddly subdued keyboard tone and lousy covers…

…next?

Unendlich – Thanatophobia (Horror Pain Gore Death) (February 1)

Oh, good GOD, two from these guys in the same month? Did I do something really, really horrible in a past life or something? I mean, seriously…

(listens to a few tracks)

wait…wha?

OK, the black metal snarls still suck some serious ass, but something’s clearly changed here. Now, apparently, there are 5 whole years separating these two albums (despite their being issued and reissued in the same month), so it makes sense that there’s been time to grow and tighten up some seriously loose ends. But this is quite a change.

For one thing, the smarmy sounding clean vocals have morphed into more of a depressive chant sort of thing, which suits the music much better. Hell, if the entire album was comprised of tracks like “my own misery”, I’d be amazedly saluting the guy for puling himself up by the bootstraps and turning dogshit into a surprisingly palatable sort of gothic doom!

Sadly, this is not the case, as the rest of the album consists of a bombastic black/death, oddly offset/bolstered by Rouse’s ongoing, deliberately off kilter and attention-mugging “session drumming”. But still in all…it’s a much more mature affair, and far more listenable. Even the production’s better, if subtly so.

So, bottom line…I really wish this guy went the route of “my own misery”, so I could give him the nod after slamming his first album so deservedly hard for all its failings.

But as is…if you’re curious enough to check ’em out? You know exactly which one’s worthy of your time and attention, and which to avoid like the plague.

It’s all in there, the depressing but somehow annoying vibe to the riffing, the neverending blastbeats, the singsongy tremelo lead riffing and aimlessly atonal “progressive/avant garde” bits, the yodel-howling and shrieking vox…to sum this up into one quick, easy to digest phrase, this feels quite oppressive.

I don’t mean that as any sort of compliment.

NEXT?!?

Der Rote Milan – Moritat (Unholy Conspiracy Deathwork) (February 1)

Is modern black metal all the same?

I mean, seriously. There have been a few labels who’ve come on board of late that have impressed the shit out of me, like Wolfspell or Sun & Moon, and others like Saturnal, Sepulchral and Moribund have at the very least had their moments (particularly Saturnal, who tend to err on the side of killer far more than that of filler), sure.

But there are entire county-wide landfills and dumpster fires comprised of nothing but execrable, utterly worthless attempts at being “sinister”, “evil”, “occult” and “tr00”. Our own Pile of Dead Bards was ritualistically set ablaze in an act of Will a year or two back, with the aim of thinning the herd of this sort of pointlessly ear-grating cheese, some of the worst being not even the trendy hipster types, but those misguided souls trying to convince the world and themselves that they’re “the real deal”, ooga booga fuck you-ga. Whatever. Burn, baby, burn.

So the question of where these Germans lie on the scale of trendy to tr00 kvlt, I could care less. What I care about is the atmosphere, the vibe, the sinister feel, the light up the chakras fire the real deal always manages to ignite in the listener so inclined. And so ridiculously few acts marching under the black metal banner these days even understand what the hell that means, much less apprehend or achieve some measure of same.

So yeah. There are some melodic moments here (like “gnosis der verganglichkeit”, which therefore winds up as the only listenable track on the album), and they’re no worse than a legion of equally boring to downright inexcusably shitty acts peddling their wares in the name of satan, nihilism, politically incorrect sociopolitic or sheer D&D-derivative geekdom.

But the fact that they’re no better is becoming enough for me.

Straight to the flames, baby. To everything, burn, burn, burn.

Maestus – Deliquesce (code666) (February 8)

Well…look, the promo writeup had the balls to compare these guys to Ahab, so you know hopes were set unreasonably high…and no, they’re nothing whatsoever like those…er, Giants of progressive funeral doom.

Hell, there’s nothing at all progressive or clean sung about this one…it’s all blackened, snarling vocalled, distorted guitar aggression. About the closest you can offer are some moments of droning synthesizer and cleaner, more overdrive-based guitar, whose long fermata-bedecked phrases at least confirm that they are, in fact, a funeral doom act…albeit an inappropriately “blackened” version thereof.

So was I OK with this? Well…vocals aside, definitely.

But Ahab? Seriously?

And here’s hoping they find themselves a frontman who can actually sing, or at least who goes in for deep death metallish belches. This black metal snarl shit simply does not belong here.

Slow – IV – Mythologiae (code666) (January 25)

Another glacial if not funereal doom act, this time out of Belgium.
Which means there’s a cute French (speaking) girl in tow (“Lore B.”,
who handles “bass, lyrics and concepts”). So far, so good.*

* Hey, I’m shallow sometimes. A pretty face goes a long way.

That aside, what we have here is a reasonably similar case to that of
Maestus. It’s far less “blackened” in feel, and therefore works a whole
hell of a lot better overall…but the vocals still leave a lot to be desired.
There’s also a lot of drone, what sounds like a synthesized tone that
rings throughout on the surface but simply proves annoying over the
course of 6 circa 12 minute long tracks.

Look, I’m not part of their band, so I know what I’d do (or be pushing
for the others to do, if in more of an ancillary role than bandleader).
And that almost always means clean up those fucking vocals, make
sure there’s some modulation and a melodic base to the material, and
try to get some good, crisp production that leans towards bottom end
thickness over treble rawness (and eschews the dreaded mids almost
entirely!) while focusing on atmosphere, improvisation and feel above
all else.

These guys check off several of those boxes, and the end result is
pretty damn solid for slow, depressively inclined funeral doom.

So yeah, I’m good with this, all shit vocals and annoying single tone
synth drones aside.

Leach – Hymns For the Hollow (January 18)

Another case of serious disconnect between what’s promised and the
actual end product delivered, this one’s promo writeup mentions
melodicism, riffs and being fun loving. Hey, sounds good, right?

So why am I hearing some guy gargle-shout aggro vox over an annoying generic “modern metal” informed by the more tuneless end of both thrash and aggro/groove (or if you really want to push your luck, the lesser end of metalcore)?

Yeah, this is crap. Our local college “metal” station plays shit like this
all the time, which leaves their “metal” credentials seriously in
question…much like their sponsorship by those SJW ninnies* at a site which claims in its very title its disdain for Metal (think “Metal Blows”, you’ll figure it out), which should hammer the final nails in that particular coffin
for the curious.

* Yeah, my politicosocial orientation should be painfully obvious toanyone with eyes, particularly if you read the openers mostmonths…but that pandering victim culture identity politik-drivenIntersectionalist bullshit? You can take that steaming load and shoveit, right alongside the tiki torch crowd who adopted identitarianismbefore ya…hint, fucking hint.

One big question to ask yourselves, if you disagree, or recognizeyourself as part of that particular problem: just how long have youfound yourself gazing into the abyss? Selah…

So back to this particular album. Is there anything good to say here?

searching…searching…(cursor blinks repeatedly)

…nah.

Next?

Tourniquet – GAZING AT MEDUSA (PATHOGENIC RECORDS) (October 16)

Oh, geez, Tourniquet?

I remember picking up the cassette of Psycho Surgery way back in ’91. Was never sure quite what to make of ’em, the band was too technical, too quirky, too intrinsically weird to really fit in the thrash scene of the day, much less the Christian (thrash) metal scene they hailed from. Let’s just say for the record, Deliverance or Vengeance (Rising) they weren’t…

Well, we’re quite a ways from 1991, now, but despite losing oddball frontman Guy Ritter and his weird Jani Lane pop eyed gaze (what the hell was that all about, anyway?), they’re back and sounding much the same…almost identical, in fact, albeit with the only remaining band member from those days being drummer Ted Kirkpatrick.

And the drums are pretty damn solid, here, as you may expect…plus he brings those oddly sideways attempts at lyrical prosyletization the band was known for.

But what makes this really interesting? Somehow Ted managed to pull
in some real heavyweights here, namely former Iced Earth frontman
Tim “Ripper” Owens (I’m sorry, he’ll always be the shrieking
Painkiller-era frontman of Priest cover band Stained Class to me…and
no, they weren’t going by “British Steel” when they played locally, so
there!) and ex-Megadeth six stringer Chris Poland. Seriously. Oh, and
famed AOR/metal drummer Deen Castronovo dropped by as well, but
just to do vocals on the title track. Damn, Ted!

Well, to level set somewhat, while Poland does get some interesting solos in amidst all the winding riffage on display, Owens isn’t exactly soaring vocalled here, but rather copping strangely close to the snarky oddball
sprechtgesang delivery Ritter was prone to. Why, man? You get an
internationally respected vocallist, and make him do that?

But hey, if you were looking for a 2018 clone of 1991’s Psycho
Surgery featuring better musicians, no question this was achieved
here.

But while that’s certainly admirable enough, that’s my final question for
ya, Ted. You got a six stringer on the level of Chris Poland. You got a
frontman on the level of Tim Owens.

Shouldn’t you have made better use of them, Owens in particular?

I’m very divided, here. This is both exactly what I expected, and totally
unlike what I expected…and hey, if you liked the earlier material, you’ll love this, no question.

I’m just shaking my head at the sheer waste of resources on display
here.

Vanha – Melancholia (Black Lion Records) (December 30)

Damn, a lot of funeral-leaning doom this month! Good by me…

Anyway, this is a Swedish act that self-identifies as doom/death (or vice versa), noting the likes of gothic doomsters Anathema and My Dying Bride as influences and stylistic markers.

It all starts to blend after a while with these sub-subgenre classifications, but you get the idea from all of that: slow, zombie lurch and shuffle tempo, funeral march doom, well produced and grim. In this case, it comes with death metallish growl vox that while not exactly my idea of a go to for this sound, do actually fit well enough not to stand out in any negative way.

As with the bands referenced, there’s plenty of melody and even more
melancholy to be found herein, complete with violin parts for that extra
touch of misery. Sure to make those prone to do so well up with tears at the injustices of life (and the loss thereof).

Very good stuff, no question. I dug it.

WAN – Gammal är äldst (Carnal Records) (December 21)

oh, nice!

Old school, first wave style black metal (or perhaps more accurately, blackthrash) in the vein of early Bathory and later attempts at recapturing same like post-Panzerfaust Darkthrone, Aura Noir, Desaster, you get the picture.

Of course, you can also hear a bit of Tsjuder in tracks like “till maskama slangd” or “out of your league”, and they toss the occasional “oof!” in just to remind everyone how important early Celtic Frost (and the even more primitive Hellhammer before ’em) were to establishing the black metal sound per se…

It’s got the grinding, crunchy midtempo riffs and never really loses its head even on the speedier tracks (only “strong as a bear” pushes the line into full on generic black metal), so this worked just fine to these ears.

Keep it low and slow, guys. The faster you go, the more passable it becomes in this style.

4/5 tracks work really, really well.

MÜTIILATION – The Lost Tapes (Osmose Productions) (December 24)

Now this is interesting…

This is Mutiilation, one of the two pillars of France’s estimable Les Legions Noires, and this time, we’re not talking about another middling comeback attempt. No, this sounds right from the get go…

Turns out, no surprise why, because it’s some rehearsal tapes from 10 years back where the man re-records several tracks from his two album heyday in a form that’s…well, pretty much the same degree of raw, buzzing and compressed in tone as the originals.

Even so. You get 3 tracks apiece from Vampires of Black Imperial Blood and Remains of a Ruined, Dead, Cursed Soul. Good stuff then, good stuff now.

The real question is, is there any real purpose to hearing the same songs again, albeit recorded at different times or with slight alterations? Or is this yet another Mayhem Life Eternal/Judas Iscariot Ancient Starry Sky situation, where there’s little if any change to be heard?

Well, honestly…I incline towards the latter. You can hear differences, particularly if you’re already (very) familiar with the material, but if you have ’em, is this something to run out and grab? Only if you’re a completist, really.

But if you’ve never heard those storied albums before, or just want to see what they’d sound like with less of a full sound (if you can believe that!), there is nothing whatsoever to fault about this one.

Classic material, in slightly rawer form. What’s not to like?

GORGON – The Veil of Darkness (Osmose Productions) (January 25)

French black metal act, apparently with four albums and an EP under their belts. Cycled through quite a roster of members both male and female, now listed as a one man operation. No, I never heard of ’em either.

What you’ll hear is a fairly standard black/death, albeit one more inclined to melodicism and less prone to bombast than usual. The vox are the only really annoying/abrasive part, outside of the occasional use of blastbeats, and more tracks than you’d think lean midtempo, with almost thrashy first wavelike riffing tossed in to the mix.

I can’t say I was overly thrilled by this one, but shave a few of the speedier, more typically “black metallish” tracks, either bury the vox in the mix or find a new frontman…

…then yeah, this wouldn’t be bad at all.

DØDSFALL – Døden Skal Ikke Vente (Osmose Productions) (January 25)

Norwegian black metal. And it sounds it.

While all the grim, mysterious atmosphere that marked the nation’s output (and the genre per se) in its heyday is entirely absent, the melodic lead lines and speedy tremelo runs are present and accounted for, never really falling into the Norsecore trap despite the speed, never slumming as black/death even with the bombast.

Even so, there’s much about this that feels as familiar as an old shoe…it’s hard to pin down exactly what elements are in play here, but suffice to say, it’s very much Norwegian black metal, with elements that marked the scene during various developments and stages throughout the 90’s…just with fuller, cleaner production and bombast, more melodicism than usual and just about zero atmosphere.

Yeah, it’s kind of hard to pin down just what makes it work as well as it does. But in the end, all you really need to know is that it’s pretty damn solid.

INFERNARIUM – Kadotuksen Harmonia (Helter Skelter) (January 21)

We’d covered these Finns’ debut EP Pimean Hotho a few months back, and here they are again with a full length.

The pluses I can hear, at least this time around (cough) are a decidedly Hornaesque approach to melodicism crossed with some of the ugliest, nastiest gargling drain cleaner vocals you’re likely to hear.

I mean, you could drag Gorgoroth in somewhat spuriously, given all the melodies and attention to lead lines as driver of the sound, but this is more particularly Finnish in feel – the sort of kveldssanger singsong thing you’ll catch in everyone from Azazel to Satanic Warmaster to Sargeist.

There’s a nice bit of Catholic church organ and chanting thrown into the mix (and yeah, it is, there’s nothing eeeeevil about it) that opens “heikkoutensa orja” (and hence the album), before falling into more of a Clandestine Blazelike midtempo crunch, complete with Tom G. Warrior grunts.

Later tracks pick up to more of a Warmaster tempo (and sound), and always the sound is that of dark descent, but with more grim melodicism than you’ll ever find outside of the Finnish strain of the scene.

Trust me, you’ll never believe this is even the same band that recorded that piece of shit Pimean Hotho. I had to go back and check, and
cross check, so far removed are the two releases from each other in sound, overall quality and approach.

Two former Malevolent Creation drummers (one of whom further hails from Florida’s Solstice, the other from top notch Death tribute act Gruesome) join forces with the guitarist of Gruesome…and on the best track, the vocalist of Gruesome, Matt Harvey.

Sounds like a Gruesome side project, especially when you realize this is essentially a Malevolent Creation tribute album, much like what Gruesome is doing: building albums of brand new material, in very much the same style as what the band being saluted was doing (in Gruesome’s case, on a given Death album…if you can say that here, it’s a tossup as to whether we’re talking Ten Commandments or Retribution. I’d bet on the latter.)

All good so far…though be warned, Harvey’s only on “flesh blood and stone”, the rest is essayed by…wait for it…one of the two drummers aforementioned (Alex Marquez, also sticksman of Solstice).

It’s funny to see this being simultaneously acknowledged and deflected in the promo writeup, where it shifts to comparisons of early thrash heavy hitters like Slayer, Dark Angel, the Teutonic trio of Sodom/Kreator/Destruction and Possessed. Yeah, we get that those bands were dark enough to inadvertantly birth the later death and black
metal scenes…but that’s not what we’ve got here.

No, Create a Kill is all about the Malevolent Creation worship, arguably with a side of Demolition Hammer. Death/thrash at its rawest and most aggressive…yet, like Malevolent, strangely catchy, even sort of melodic in a way.

You know, what today’s thrash and death metal acts entirely miss about the heyday of underground metal…the fact that this shit stuck in your head and wasn’t solely about the aggression. Selah.

Look, I was down with this as soon as I heard “Malevolent Creation tribute ala/by the members of Gruesome”…fucking love those guys.

The rest of this is a far more standard to boring black/death, albeit one marked by occasional melodic high points (“dawn of a new day”, the intros to “looking into the void” and “black sword”). If those were more the order of the day, these guys would be getting a much different review.

As it stands…consider this promise duly squelched under the merciless jackboot of black metal’s generic, all consuming influence (the genre that literally destroys everything it touches, and only works in its truest, purest forms).

As this is yet another black-slash-fill in the blank, it’s only suitable for a
quick trip to the Flaming Pyre of Dead Bards.

Too bad, there were moments that showed ’em capable of so much more…and I really liked “dawn of a new day”.

Here, you take it over and toss it in the flames, will ya? I mourn the loss of what could have been a much better band.

RANCORUM – THE VERMIN SHRINE (Loud Rage Music) (November 29)

Romanian death metal, sadly of the more modern school thereof.

Even beyond the weird tech breaks and atonality, I’m hearing a whole lot of Inquisition-style lower string bends as part of the riffing. Why, man, why?

Nah.

DECAY – BRAND NEW NAILS EP (Loud Rage Music) (October 26)

Another Romanian act, this time more of a dark thrash with terrible production. Seriously, this sounds like it was recorded under 5 pillows and a mattress, it’s that soft and muddy. Think (at best) cassette demo quality…probably a few generations down in tape trading circles.

I guess I’m hearing a vague comparison to Root here, though their production was much better…but that sort of “is it traditional metal? thrash? death? blackened? Somehow all of the above, done in that weirdly “wrong” style of bands behind the former Iron Curtain?” vibe.

Yeah, I guess we’ll go with that. A sort of Root, with some seriously crappy production. At least it’s not all hiss and crackle…quite the opposite, in fact.

It’s all throbbing bass tones, as if you were listening while stone drunk,
drowning in a pool or laying in a pool of your own blood after a fight that
went sideways!

Greek tech death act, but one that (for a change) doesn’t instantly piss
the listener off.

In fact, there’s some good playing, quirkily interesting riffing and a strange sort of…well, “melodicism” or “catchiness” isn’t exactly the word I’m reaching for here, but you get the idea.

Just put on a track like “escape to bliss” and you’ll see what I mean: the kind of riffing that makes you want to grab the guitar and play along, rather than the aimless atonality that leaves you holding your ears and
leaving the room in disbelief and disgust.

Yeah, the vocals suck some serious ass.

But that aside? This is probably the best tech death album you’re likely to run across in the modern era, and certainly the standard bearer for what could and should be done with the style.

Seriously, ever since the guy started dropping the weird with Faith No More and Mr. Bungle, it seems like some pandora’s box was exposed to the light, loosing dozens on dozens of shitty atonal, aimlessly “experimental” acts of varying genre with zero relation to melody, harmony or structure.

We’re not talking “progressive” or “jazzy”, where one plays with the accepted boundaries of musical decorum like a scientist in his workshop, pushing and searching for expansion of the idiom and as the Moody Blues once put it, “the search for the lost chord”. That stuff is justly celebrated for its ebb and flow, stretching outwards like a rubber band before snapping back into comfortable familiarity, and back again.

It’s a game, almost: just how “free” and far away can we take this from classical harmony, melody, chordal structure and song composition before it fails to resonate with the listener, to become abject noise?

For many years, the likes of Sun Ra and Ornette Coleman were the visionary/lunatics working the most contested fringes of what did and didn’t work musically. Or on the classical side, the likes of Schoenberg, Stockhausen, Varese and Cage (among many others).

There was a popular question across the creative arena, from music to painting and sculpture to literature and film during the heyday of all this experimentation in the beatnik and hippie era, “but is it art?”

Some can debate the likes of Warhol, Rothko, Klee and Pollock, while others accept their never changing works as some sort of philosophical statement on or against art per se.

Warhol in particular was the posterboy for all of this, with his “everything is art”, going so far as to have others work his campy screen prints (which he’d then sign!) and tongue in cheek “event” works like stacking boxes of Brillo and then managing to get that into a museum.

And the answer is, no, it’s not art…but we get the joke, and the nihilistic “fuck you” behind your work.

Sadly, the same cannot be said of all these conveyor belt regurgitations of what once was. You can celebrate, pay tribute to, copy slavishly things, bands, albums you love…some make a career out of it, and do a damn good job about it (we’d only recently discussed Gruesome this month).

But to slavishly repeat a Warholian “art statement” 20 or 30 years on, one band after another? Is beyond pointless.

You’re not making proper music, we get that. But that means the only value in this is the statement you’re making philosophically.

And that’s been made far too many times, over far too many years to bear the slightest bit of resonance or impact here in 2019.

Time to put a pin in this “experimental avant garde” shit. Y’all are done.

Like many Rogga Johanssen projects (no, this isn’t one of his…), the sound is pretty dead on Sunlight Studios HM-2 Entombed/Dismember/Carnage school buzzsaw guitar, sorta crusty and punkish Swedish death metal.

It ain’t exactly Left Hand Path or Pieces, but it works just fine for yet
another in the legion of modern day acts looking to add a footnote to
the appendix of the classics.

Yeah, there’s way too many bands working this sound of late.

But when it sounds this good, who the hell’s complaining?

Satan’s Host – Midnight Wind (Moribund Records) (November 23)

We covered this classic USPM act’s Metal From Hell reissue two Roundups back, wondering just why Moribund hadn’t included this EP alongside it…and here it is.

Recorded right after the band’s sole 80’s release, this was, like far too many bands of the era (not least Harry “Tyrant” Conklin’s main gig Jag Panzer) a victim of small local labels with big plans and little funding to realize same. The label in question went belly up, the EP was never released, Conklin moved on to the excellent Titan Force, then back to Jag Panzer, eventually finding his way back to these guys very recently in the span of things.

Another victim of much bootlegging over the years, this is touted as the first official release of this album ever. And like Metal From Hell, the remastering is noticeable…at least for those familiar with earlier “unofficial” releases of the same material.

Now, those walking in off the metaphorical street so to speak, the first timers to this unusual mix of proto-black and the NWOBHM to thrash leanings of vintage US power metal? They’re shaking their heads right now. Can material that sounds this…demo-like (a much more colorful descriptor came to mind, but we’ll refrain for the nonce) possibly have been given a proper remaster? Well, yeah. You have to hear earlier releases of this one…

Also keep in mind: as variable in sound quality as Metal from Hell is from track to track, this one’s definitely worse, and always was. It’s an EP, and an unreleased one at that, from the days when EPs were considered throwaways and experiments for stylistic stretches (not that some EPs weren’t better than the albums they append – Emperor’s Return, Mad Butcher and Eyes of Horror come immediately to mind here). Bottom line, nobody threw a bunch of money into this one, or even took good care of the tapes. It’s a miracle Midnight Wind sounds as good as it does.

There’s also the fact that, well, it’s an EP. That means cover songs (The Animals, anyone?), castoffs (Jag Panzer’s “black sunday”) and songs that, while very much in the same vein, aren’t necessarily as strong as those appearing on the prior album.

But all that said…it’s Harry Conklin. Jag Panzer. Titan Force. And he’s fronting some very unusual material, far more aggressive, raw and lyrically satanic than anything else you’ll hear the guy doing. And where the hell else will you find material this…strange? Blackened power metal…seriously?

So yeah, I’m glad to have this one in my hands, at least digitally speaking…making another small corner of the USPM collection complete.

If you like what you heard on Metal From Hell…don’t fuck around, just grab this one already.

Weirdly catchy, dead on piss take on the late 80’s Los Angeles metal
scene.

While coming off very much like Zodiac Mindwarp or Manitoba’s Wild
Kingdom, with the growly vocalled mugging of some guy going by
“King of the Night Time World” (seriously…), the band themselves are
surprisingly po-faced, making the contradiction between vocals,
deliberately comic lyrics and seriously good vintage dual guitar metal
utterly bizarre, even jarring.

While this guy goes on about being “thirsty for your box”, “Canadian
hookers”, taking a “boy’s night out on gay street” and singing touching
ballads to the ladyfriend about taking it “in through the out door” in his
goofy gravel voice, you’ve got the equivalent of Ratt, Dokken or Quiet
Riot chugging away behind him with killer riffs, impressive leads and
good production (those drums sound great, the guitars bear the mix of
fat and raw the aforementioned bands were marked by).

I mean, they actually pulled in Ted “Million Dollar Man” DiBiase for
“jobber” (though it sounds recorded off VHS, so it may be “with
permission” rather than a new bit of business), so you get the idea of
just how seriously to take these guys.

And yet…listen to those fucking riffs and solos! They could dump the
chain yanking bit, grab a proper singer and make a go of it as a straight
up retro Hollywood hair metal act…amazing recreation, to be sure.

Snow on Ferrett Mountain is a far more forgettable affair, being a four track “Christmas album”…er, EP. There’s an acoustic version of the
aforementioned “thirsty” and a weird cover of Wham! UK’s “last
Christmas” (remember when that’s how they were marketed in stores?)
that we’re supposed to find funny, but it’s just like your drunken uncle
singing the song straight and without much alteration*, albeit in the
band’s usual mocking vocal tone. Oh, and two more tracks that weren’t
good enough to make the album proper about one night stands and
such.

Bottom line? Stick to In Through the Out Door, and try to tune the
frontman out.

Can we have this remastered to remove/replace the vocals? This
band could really be killer, if played straight…another fucking Darkness
we don’t need.

Your dinner lady arms are showing, guys.

]]>https://thirdeyecinema.wordpress.com/2019/01/17/a-new-and-hopefully-better-year-awaits/feed/1thirdeyecinemaOn Yoolis Night…Yuletide Solstice greetingshttps://thirdeyecinema.wordpress.com/2018/11/20/on-yoolis-night-yuletide-solstice-greetings/
https://thirdeyecinema.wordpress.com/2018/11/20/on-yoolis-night-yuletide-solstice-greetings/#respondTue, 20 Nov 2018 17:49:30 +0000http://thirdeyecinema.wordpress.com/?p=28228Continue reading →]]>So, yeah, it’s been another month, and my foray into the (for yours truly) previously neglected corners of European power metal continues, with the new heavyweights of airplay shifting from long beloved acts like Rhapsody, Sonata Arctica, Alestorm and early Hammerfall to settle in on the unholy triumvirate of Edguy, Elvenking…and Powerwolf.*

* well, since this intro was written, the powerfully vocalled Brainstorm, who also did all their good work after moving to AFM, by the way (hell, I’d venture that not only is Midnight Ghost worthy of being noted as album of the year, but as a career pinnacle) has moved up to make this very much of a foursome…but even so.

That’s right. I said the P word again. But did you notice who just slipped in to the frontrunners?

Yep, last month I’d mentioned a burgeoning affection towards Mandrake/Hellfire Club era Edguy, which has blossomed into…well, their entire career with AFM (Hellfire Club marked their move to Nuclear Blast, and while that album remains unimpeachable, their subsequent career…well, lets be nice and say the highlights are a whole lot more rarified than they were in their heyday.

And yeah, I’m including Space Police, where Sammet sounds less like a younger, more emphatic and fun loving cross between Michael Kiske and Bruce Dickinson, and more like an oversmoked old man, ala Bloodgood’s Les Carlson. Yeesh!

And Powerwolf, I’ve settled in on their last few albums in their double disc incarnations, (though without question, Communio Lupatum blows the living shit out of the actual album it’s bundled with, sorry…) but a few choice cuts aside (mostly covered on that second all-star disc), Preachers of the Night and Blessed and Possessed are their most polished A game high points, don’t believe the hype about the early stuff.

But one I didn’t mention last time around, because it was more of a tentative thing at the time…was another surprise.

Sure, we more or less gave the thumbs up to their last few, inclusive of the live album even (never a go-to around here, “live” tends to mean “inessential” if not “for diehard fans only”), but memories of another questionable third tier Italian power metal band (whose name I ran across a few weeks back, realized my mistake…and promptly forgot again!* Suffice to say, they suck…) left us with a disbelieving eye towards the prospect that they may actually have been halfway decent, once…something their full on emo period (cough Scythe) and the yawn and stretch period that followed (Era, Red Silent Tides) only cemented.

* and a few days later, it came to me. Spellblast. “Horns of Silence” was the album in question, many a year ago…

But then I got exposed to Wyrd. Yep, the one “Damna”‘s not even on.

You know, their best album.

And then there’s the spotty (but absolutely killer when it works, like the AFI gone folk/power of “trow’s kind”) Winter’s Wake. And the often excellent Pagan Manifesto. Even Two Tragedy Poets (a certain rather bizarre choice of cover tune aside) and at least the recycled demo tracks off Heathenreel.

Yeah, they’re quite spotty, and we overestimated the worth of their Secrets of the Magick Grimoire, which comes off as rather dull and generically power metal by comparison. But when they really kick in with the neo-Celtic folk bits, and “Damna” starts with his dead on Davey Havok impressions…yeah.

Hell, tracks like you find on Winter’s Wake are AFI through and through, but adapted to a very different palette and medium…excellent example of how a good band can do syncretization and adaptation!

Seriously. When these guys are on, they’re on. The energy, the good vibes, a sort of anthemic, fight-ready feel you can’t quite get from any of the genres they’re gathering together (but when thrown together, winds up amplified dramatically)…why do you guys have to be so god damned spotty?

Well, here’s hoping Secrets was another unexpected detour ala The Scythe, to be course corrected on the next (Sally) go-round (the roses). Because while I love the young Sammet’s voice, and the cheesy singalong beer hall anthems of Powerwolf are surprisingly compelling? On the tracks where they get it down (i.e. more folky and punky, less generically power metallish), Elvenking may actually be my favorite of the three.

Well, White Lion vet Greg D’Angelo is no longer part of the proceedings after last February’s Smash, but someone’s apparently tightened the bolts and cracked the whip on Pearcy and company, offering a steadier ship, one more familiar to fans of his Ratt heyday (or at least their direct knockoff Whitecross, around the same era).

Pearcy’s vocals are still on the edge of falling apart, but there’s less uncertainty and obvious warbling failures than we were all unfortunately privy to on the last go ’round.

Oddly, promo materials try to talk up his sideman Erik Ferentinos like he’s some fretboard genius, but there’s simply nothing impressive to report on that front.

In point of fact, you’ve heard more flashy guitar work in bands like Poison and Cinderella than you’ll ever get out of this guy. Passably simplistic, sure…but even C.C. blew this guy right the fuck off the stage, no questions asked.

That said, he and Pearcy obviously work well together, given the generally apropos riffing and decided improvements shown in this album over Smash.

The only thing I really don’t get is all the Bond film title references, which stretch from song titles, album name and cover to actual lyrics (“double shot” in particular). There doesn’t seem to be any purpose to them, and following that thread leads to a brick wall. And why does he keep going on about The Crying Game, you have to wonder? Has the man been “experimenting” in his private life or something? Yeesh…

But all that aside, here’s the bottom line: while it’s hardly up to the glory days of Di Martini, Crosby and company, View to a Thrill is certainly the best we’ve seen from Pearcy in recent years.

Take that as you will, but them’s the facts.

TEN – Illuminati (Frontiers Music s.r.l.) (November 9)

We’d covered this UK AOR act’s Gothica last summer, and appreciated their unusual subject matter as much as their smooth, well produced and polished approach to music, despite it’s surprising lightness given the decidedly dark subject matter.

Here things take another odd curve, losing the fascinating subject matter in favor of that cheesy old right wing conspiracy theory about “secret string pullers” that influence world sociopolitic and economics “behind the scenes”. To be fair, they’re also on the side of billionaire “dark money” SuperPAC types, who fund right wing politicians world over to their own selfish ends…so if anyone’s going to believe in a silly theory like this, they’re the ones with the most supporting evidence and fingers in the till to prove it!

But we’re hardly talking the likes of Sheldon Adelson and ALEC here. No, this is the absurd Eye in the Triangle Masonic conspiracy crap perpetuated by SF authors and loons like Robert Anton Wilson…and a pretty loosely connected collection of songs, all balladeering and happy radio pop rock about…you know, Sir Francis Bacon and the Hellfire Club and all that shit.*

* Not really, that’d be much more interesting. But you get the idea.

Yawn.

Well, the music isn’t far divorced from last time around, still oddly light, soft and happy given the lyrics and concept involved…but a whole hell of a lot less interesting this time around. What’s next, a cover of Ministry’s “new world order”?

Can’t fault the band for remaining polished…but sorry, unless you’re a card carrying member of the tin foil hat crowd (the guv’mint’s a-comin’ after yer military assault weapons!) there’s really nothing to see here, this time around.

NORDIC UNION – Second Coming (Frontiers Music s.r.l.) (November 9)

Pretty Maids’ Ronnie Atkins (here sounding a whole hell of a lot more like Shakra’s John Prakesh than himself – I actually had to confirm this wasn’t a Swiss Desi/Swedish Union this time around, so close does Atkins come to Prakesh’s approach and tonality) and W.E.T.’s Erik Martensson come back together for another Nordic Union album.

This time around, they lose the guest lead players (like the guy from Unleashed…still can’t wrap the ol’ noggin around that one…) in
favor of a stripped down Two Men and a Drummer operation.

Other than that, not much has changed – Martensson brings the big hooks and strong production, Atkins bolsters his…well, rather Back On Track-ish vocals with sweet multitracked choruses, the whole thing is catchy and melodic as shit.

You know, just like Back on Track was.

The only problem here? Way too many ballads taking up the running time. The midtempo rockers are all pretty damn sweet, but there simply aren’t enough of ’em.

Good stuff, but they probably should have trimmed all the ballads off and released the rest as an EP…would have been on a lot of folks’ best of show lists, for sure.

Because, you know, goofy-ass Phantom of the Opera cheesefests about fucking Dracula are always in hot demand, right?

Now, if it was less about Bela Lugosi and the stageplay he made famous and more about the psychopathic Wallachian sadist who tortured folks and made guests eat dinner surrounded by moaning impaled near-corpses, this would have been…pretty damn freaky, to say the least.

Well, this is…special. And some great riffs, there. You know the kind where you take a riff, climb it up a whole tone, then transpose it down a whole tone, then back up to another? That sort of lazy “songwriting”, famed for bad song endings from Bon Jovi to Skid Row back in the day?

Okay, I’m done. I’ll let the man’s own…er, libretto speak for me.

“You’re just an ugly monster, no grace for what you’ve done!”

Indeed.

RED DRAGON CARTEL – Patina (Frontiers Music s.r.l.) (November 9)

You know, back in the day, even as a major Randy Rhoads fan (one of two men who inspired me to take up the guitar in the first damn place, there…), I always liked “bark at the moon” (the song, not the decidedly mediocre album it was part of) and especially The Ultimate Sin.

Unfairly maligned to the point where the associated DVD wound up as a Japan only import (yeah, you know I had to get it), this may have been derided as “Ozzy’s glam period”, but it was the best and most consistent album the guy’s ever recorded outside of the two Blizzard of Ozz albums (or the first three Black Sabbath ones prior to that).

I mean, seriously – Zakk Wylde? Randy with squelch harmonics, barely had a half an album of material in him before going all unforgivable balladeering (the atrocious No More Tears) and Southern groove (Black Label Society). And who the hell even cares what came after that? Ozzy is famous for that first trilogy, maybe four Sabbath records and the two Rhoads/Blizzard ones…and should be, for Ultimate Sin as well. Otherwise, he’s an addlebrained clown who steps in dog food dishes. Nuff said.

But where that classic Ozzy album showed Jake’s melodic tendencies (and some agressive riffing and leads to boot), the first thing I associate with the man (beyond his classic canvas hi top sneakers, anyway) is Badlands.

Occupying some unique netherworld between heavy metal and classic rock, between the post-GNR Hollywood tattooed junkie thing (all Aerosmith and Hanoi Rocks worship, even at its best) and actual traditional metal, Lee’s out of control leads and raw Marshall stack driven guitar tone elevated the first Badlands (and to some extent, its successor Voodoo Highway) well above the competition…and I mean the rather overrated Saul “Slash” Hudson and the similarly oft impressive Tracii Guns in specific.

So it was with quite the eyebrow raise that I noted the complete disappearance of the man from the music scene after the death of frontman Ray Gillen (great singer, but geez, guy, you could’ve tapped Hades/Watchtower/Non-Fiction frontman Alan Tecchio to much the same result…), and even more of one when his out of the blue return to the recording studio came on the part of 2014’s Red Dragon Cartel, whose sound was rather far afield of the man’s earlier work, whether of
the Ozzy era or that of Badlands.

So it is with much relief that I am proud to report that questionable choice of vocalist aside (I’m sorry, but Darren James Smith clearly studied at the feet of grungesters like Layne Staley and Chris Cornell, rather than any actual metal frontman), Patina sounds a whole fuck of a lot closer to Badlands Mark II than anything on display last time around.

The same guitar tone, the same play with its mechanics and what non-fretted sounds and bits of business can be evoked from it with few if any outside effects pedals or processing, the same teetering off the rails vibe…only the solos are more subdued, less wild and showoffish. And that disappoints the living shit out of me.

But look. Unlike what we saw four years ago? Here Jake is making a statement.

“I may be older, even perhaps a little bit calmer…but make no mistake, I am back.”

And I, for one, can certainly live with that.

A little more piss and vinegar, maybe take that hint about Tecchio or someone of that ilk…and yeah. We may have somewhat of a successor to Badlands at last.

SUIDAKRA – Cimbric Yarns (AFM Records) (November 16)

We’d covered this somewhat confused German act’s Eternal Defiance and Realms of Odoricpreviously, and the main issue with them is that they never really seemed to commit to a particular style or subgenre corner in the ever-more expansive metal landscape.

Were they some sort of “melodeath” (as the band once would have you believe)? Bordering on black metal? Or more of a symphonically oriented folk metal? This was always in question, not merely from one album to the next, but from one track to the next, much to their detriment.

But however glacially, there appears to have been a shift going on. Eternal Defiance was a whole hell of a lot more iffy and confused than the more symph/folk/pagan leaning Realms of Odoric…which brings us to Cimbric Yarns.

Now, this may well be a deliberate “experiment”, akin to Manegarm’s
excellent Urminnes Havd, Ulver’s Kveldssanger or Elvenking’s Two Tragedy Poets, where the band pointedly tones things down, drops most of the distortion and aggression and lets the songs speak for themselves. While each of those albums were great in their own right, it was generally good to see them return to their more accepted style with subsequent albums (Manegarm, perhaps, aside…that album remains their pinnacle).

But in this case? I’m seriously hoping this is the face of the “new” Suidakra.

All those elements that elevated earlier albums, particularly Odoric, are herein focused on and amplified. Male/female vocals (occasional, but most welcome). Clean vox throughout. Ren Faire-style acoustic instrumentation, but appended by more bombastic choral and symphonic group participation. The whole thing feels quite traditional/pagan in the same sense as each of the aforementioned bands and albums, particularly early Elvenking.

To say this is the best of the Suidakra albums we’ve covered is an understatement.

I’m just hoping they keep things moving more in this direction going forward, and don’t revert to all those ridiculous black and death metal tropes (and silly vox) to make up for this quite essential release.

Your efforts here most assuredly have my blessing.

Go forth, gentlemen, and sin no more.

Brothers Of Metal – Prophecy Of Ragnarök (AFM Records) (November 16)

um…can they really be “brothers”, when the only important voice you’ll hear is that of a female?

This brand new Swedish power metal act brings the cheese and lightness that country is known for in terms of mainstream metal, AOR and power metal, their simplistic, sing-songy melodies and choruses evoking easy (but indirect) comparisons to Sabaton. Sabaton drops the war schtick and goes Viking?

OK, here’s the deal. They have one real vocalist, a certain Ilva Eriksson, who’s left to carry the weight bearing load over co-frontpeople Joakim Eriksson (who drops one of the silliest snarly-growl performances you’re likely to hear outside Gerhard Felix Stass) and Mats Nilsson, who may or may not handle the Joakim Broden raspy howls, but seems to be credited mostly with the ridiculous spoken word bits, which would just be pathetic if that’s all he’s there for.

So yeah, I’m going to give him credit for the howl vox, which are at least genre-appropriate…I don’t know what the fuck the male Eriksson’s deal is…does he think he’s auditioning for Crematory or something?

The rest of this…yeah, I don’t know. It’s pretty limp even for the most template of power metal, not very pagan, Viking or folk despite the image, too soft, too forgettable to really care about.

I mean, if one of their songs came up on random, you’d be unlikely to jump up to skip tracks. But it’s equally unlikely you’ll find yourself asking, “damn, who was that? I really need to get a copy of that album!”

Bottom line, they’re just starting. Better things may come.

But Ilva Eriksson, while ultimately fairly workaday among power/gothic metal femme vocalists, deserves a better showcase than this rather silly, inconsequential act.

Who knows, maybe they’ll be a big hit on the festival stage. Don’t ask me.

(sighs)

…next?

BillyBio – Feed The Fire (AFM Records) (November 30)

Holy crap, now here’s a blast from the past.

Remember Biohazard? NYC hardcore act that had some hip hop crossover? One great album (the debut), some of which got recycled for their major label followup (Urban Discipline)? Wound up on the soundtrack to one of those New Jack gang banger flicks (Judgment Night)?

Yeah, them. I remember playing the shit out of the first album back in the day, for a few months there. “Punishment” and “wrong side of the tracks” got a lot of local airplay, too. Good stuff given what was going on at the time in music.

Well, this is the one that didn’t go into porn afterwards. No, seriously. Not shitting you there.

(rolls eyes)

(big ol’ sigh ensues…)

So! Anyway!

This is the other one, whose name probably sums up his own feelings on that whole situation. “There but for the grace of God”.*

* seriously, go ask an Italian.

Well, a lot of years have passed since I last heard Biohazard, and while it’s not the same dynamic (for all his other quirks, the porn star and Graziadei served as good counterpoint to one another) and the hip hop elements are, perhaps gratefully, more or less lost to time, you can at least tell its coming from the same place.

I’d peg this one somewhere between the post-John Joseph Cro Mags (Graziadei sounds like a rabid dog here…or a cut rate Harley Flanagan, take your pick) and the faux-punk revival crap Rancid more or less cornered the market on (looks right, the political stance is more or less there, but the sound is way the fuck off target…) – “generation Z” being a prime example of the latter.

Now, to be fair, Biohazard was never straight up hardcore, at least not in the sense the old guard considers such. They hailed more from the crossover thing that included the likes of DRI, MOD, Agnostic Front and the Cro-Mags on one hand, and the post-MacKaye/Rollins/Dubar sXe scene, with bands like Bold, Judge and In My Eyes.

It’s unmistakeably punk at core, but there’s a fuck of a lot of metal in there, and in some cases (like Biohazard’s) a little hip hop here, a little 90’s grunge there (hell, Turning Point pretty much invented emo, for better or worse).

So if you’re good with that and/or love vintage Biohazard, tracks like “sodality”, “STFU” and “untruth” should bring back (hopefully good) memories of those strange interim years between mainstream, thrash and death metal and a long, embarrassing death (and much mockery) at the hands of all things grunge, aggro and nu.

Yeah, the 90’s kinda sucked. There’s no two ways about it.

But right at the beginning, for a year or two, things were still happening here and there…Graziadei’s former act being one of ’em.

Ashes Of Ares – Well Of Souls (Rock Of Angels Records) (November 9)

OK, this one kicked off (for yours truly, you know the story, regular readers) with “you know my name”, which introduced a guy who sounded like a drunken, overly raspy Richard Marx before actually opening his throat to sound like…a drunken Paul Stanley, without the lisp.

Next track, the opener “consuming the mana”…and he’s Rob Halford all of a sudden, at least for that first high note. Then it’s back to the Paul Stanley after a hard night at the ol’ boozer…

…oof! What the fuck was THAT?

Yeah, partway through the song, he starts trying to be Phil Anselmo all of a sudden…yeesh!

The man in question? Matt Barlow, former frontman of Iced Earth and, however briefly, Pyramaze. Well, that figures. The only listenable Iced Earth album I’ve come across featured Tim “Ripper” Owens on vox…

The band themselves? Not far removed from either of his past acts, somewhat proggy, if a bit too thrashy and aggressive metal of a decidedly modernist bent.

Guitars are decent if overly busy, production’s good, and Barlow himself sounds good, keeping those Anselmo bits to a comparative minimum and sticking more to the Stanley by way of Tom Waits thing…which to a guy who knows Paul was the closest thing to talent Kiss ever had (bar a few fill in guitarists in the 80’s) is hardly a bad thing to be saying.

Is this some great vocalist for the ages, a band to be held in the highest renown?

Are you fucking kidding me? No.

But is Barlow a decent enough singer, with plenty of force and confidence on the mic to carry even a generic sounding band like this, despite a weird insistence on trying to revert to growly aggro tropes at random intervals?

Definitely, yes. And I didn’t mind him at all, that aside.

Here’s hoping he whips that band into shape to deliver something more worthy of his apparent talents.

Ginger Red – Donuts And Coffee (El Puerto Records GbR) (November 9)

German hard rock band in the modern style (i.e. much like Shakra or The New Black, crossing the border between AOR and downtuned modern metal).

They have a frontwoman who goes by “The Mad” (presumably a Madeline of some sort) and their songs are catchy enough, but the tone seems a bit confused.

The general impression is that they’re trying to be a goofy, good humored party band, but somewhere between the guitar tone and a few of the song lyrics (such as the police state-related “get down”) that’s lost entirely to a more gritty, po-faced feel. It’s never quite downbeat, but hardly the sort of thing you’ll throw on for an after work pick me up either.

I guess if you dig what The New Black is throwing down and don’t mind more of a femme fronted Nashville feel, you may well appreciate Ginger Red a whole lot more than I did.

Color me nonplussed.

Flight – A Leap Through Matter (High Roller Records) (November 30)

You know, promo materials note these Norwegian’s sonic indebtedness to Saxon, and that’s obvious. But so is a bit of Heavy Load, Budgie, Sweet Savage and especially early Praying Mantis.

Yep, these guys are more NWOBHM than any twenty modern acts claiming to work that vintage sound…and that’s a good thing. Oddly, something about the production here also spells “vinyl rip”. There’s that oddly thin, distorted sound that leaves the listener practically hearing the hiss and crackles of the needle hitting the grooves.

Vinyl obsessives should absolutely love that about them…I found it their lone failing.

Questionable production (or rip/transfer, who knows if that was deliberate on the part of High Roller, to send out a rip from the vinyl rather than the actual studio master?) aside, these guys are seriously dead on, and the closest approximation I’ve yet encountered to the oddly NWOBHM yet not, highly melodic yet gritty and powerful sound of Sweden’s Heavy Load or France’s High Power.

And that’s a really, really good thing, given how much yours truly loves the High Power debut and the classic diptych of Death or Glory and Stronger than Evil.

So why are you still sitting here, again?

Go! Get this damn thing, already!

Steve Kilbey – Sydney Rococo (Golden Robot Records) (November 23)

Okay, is there a self respecting goth…or 80’s music fan, or indie rocker on Earth who doesn’t know and love The Church? I mean, at the very least for their signature album Starfish, with its defining hit “under the milky way”?

So here’s a solo album (apparently one among dozens he’s released over the years) that finds Kilbey in fine voice and respectable form musically, despite the sheer weight of years separating this album from Starfish.

You have to pause and wonder, sometimes, given just how much time has passed since so many of our musical heroes’ heyday – is this how Sinatra fans felt in the 70’s and 80’s? How Elvis fans must have felt at the end of his Vegas career? How Beatles fans felt about The Traveling Wilburys and McFartney’s increasingly irrelevant solo career in the 80’s and 90’s?

Okay, now we’re going too far. The former Beatles really toppled precipitously come the 80’s, there’s simply no excuse for their work of that period and beyond…of course, that can (and should) also be said of their psychedelic period, so hey. Anyway...

So…yeah, if you’ve never heard The Church outside of Starfish, this is sort of like a more trippy, lighthearted Nick Cave or a less depressive Robert Smith, if you can picture some odd conflation of the two. Some strings, some piano, some full band stuff, it’s vaguely similar to Enuff Z’Nuff in a strange way, but much more listenable and likeable…or perhaps somewhat akin to The Mission (UK) with a lot less of the gothic sheen and veneer.

A few tracks like “the lonely city”, “when I love her she sings” and “sydney rococo” are even (surprisingly or no) quite Churchlike, with Kilbey sounding…much the same as he did all those years ago. Go figure.

It’s like the sort of “used to be in a good band solo album” things my former hippie pal Barry used to drop on people all the time (he was a huge record collector, with rather widespread and bizarre tastes). You’d always be surprised by a track or three, amidst the dross.

Take that sort of thing, and make the entire album more listenable (if a tad more mellow) than you’d expect…BAM, you’ve got this album.

Mixed take due to all the mellowness…but it is nice to hear the man in fine form, as if it were still the mid to late 80’s.

Amaranthe – HELIX (Spinefarm Records) (October 19)

Like a more melodically inclined, far less detuned and self consciously “gothic” Lacuna Coil, Amaranthe is one of those silly “beauty and beast” acts, overly electronic and simplistic in a bid for radio airplay but aggressive and melodic enough to serve the metal crowd as well.

Their appeal is, like Lacuna Coil, centered entirely on femme frontwoman Elize Ryd, whose pop oriented alto serves the band as well as their oft bombastic choruses.

The downsides are, like Lacuna Coil, having to put up with the half assed Slipknotisms of Henrik Wilhelmsson, growling and belching away like he should be wearing one of those garbageman jumpsuits and a goofy mask, the overly simplistic child’s mobile-style keyboard riffs and electronic noises and the overly detuned, lunkheadedly nu metallish guitars at the verses.

You’ve heard it all before, the only exception to the template here being third co-frontman Nils Molin, who delivers pleasant enough if forgettable clean vocals at points. Sadly, it’s Wilhelmsson who predominates when Ryd isn’t center stage…which should be all of the time, particularly to judge by their rather excellent showing on Powerwolf’s Comunio Lupatum.

I’m not calling for a Ryd solo career – she just needs to be fronting the band either solo or with Molin. Tuning up the guitars a few steps and dropping all the silly electronic/synth business would help, too.

Bottom line? Ryd’s just fine to these eyes and ears, and Molin delivers a perfectly acceptable performance as vocal counterpoint.

It’s the rest of this that remains in question, and will most assuredly test the patience of all but the most devoted of listeners.

Shining – Animal (Spinefarm Records) (October 19)

Look, he’s “Cool As Ice”!

Seriously. Vanilla Ice? Come on, guy…

Yep, it’s the other Shining once again, back with their odd “blackjazz” thing…

Yeah, I’m sure they’ll play the shit out of this on a certain college radio station of questionable “metal” status.

That don’t make this metal, or worth your time, assuming you’ve graduated from the pimply faced, testosterone explosive teenaged demographic, where anything angry seems to find acceptance, if not outright undeserved praise.

look, someone’s a Trekkie…nice makeup! Frank Gorshin, much?

The Browning – Geist (Spinefarm Records) (October 26)

Well, we covered these Kansas City screamo types’ Isolation a few years back, and, well, the fact that there’s a song about our frontman’s favorite anime, which is (of all unfunny, ostensibly “ironic”, one note joke dogshit modern anime) One Punch Man should say it all.

This one feels a lot more electronic/industrial than we remember the last one being…but trust me, we do put the crappy ones out of our heads as soon and permanently as humanly possible, just for the sake of maintaining relative sanity.

Holy fuck, I really, really hated One Note Joke…er, One Punch Man.

Extrapolate the obvious parallel here, if you will.

Then toss the damn thing in the Flaming Pyre of Dead Bards for me, willya? I’m moving on and forgetting this one even existed.

SHVPES – Greater Than (Spinefarm Records) (November 9)

Ah, Sh-vippees! We had a good laugh on this pretentiously sub-ancient Roman monikered act’s last album reviewed here and found it melodic and oddly listenable, despite all its hipster aggro affectations.

Oddly, this one comes off as a weird copy of (get this) Rage Against the Machine, with (of all people) Bruce Dickinson’s son Griffin pulling off a dead on Zack de la Rocha on “counterfeit”…and “calloused hands”…and “someone else”…and “rain”, and so on, and so on. There’s even a weird, very Cockney rap track (“two wrongs, no rights”).

Um…is this even the same band? Seriously…

Well, no idea what happened here, or what we were hearing last time around, because the best you can say about Greater Than is that it’s Equal To vintage Rage Against the Machine…whatever the fuck that means to you.

Look, I appreciated Rocha’s nigh-anarchist stance of resistance to a society that (at the time, was just beginning to) run away from us, a trickle up economy dead set on a slow but steady stripping of freedoms and protections against the malfeasance of rich politicians and the corporatocrats that own them, lock, stock and barrel. But musically? That band was just shit.

So…here’s a Rage Against the Machine cover band, from England.

With Bruce Dickinson’s son playing Rocha.

(raises eyebrows, shakes head in disbelief)

…your move, I guess.

(sighs)

…next?

SODOM – Partisan EP (Steamhammer / SPV) (November 23)

It’s amazing how some of these bands just keep soldiering on.

I mean, not just the “big names” like Priest and Maiden and AC/DC and Sabbath, each of whom has appeared to be on the verge of calling it quits several times over the years, only to mysteriously reunite for yet another “comeback tour” and album…but the third tier ones, who bear a more specialized audience than even the likes of, say, Saxon.

Onslaught is one of these, always having occupied a niche somewhere between mocked and ignored, before being grudgingly accepted…but only for their earliest efforts. Hell, it even took me forever to come around and appreciate In Search of Sanity for the rather excellent one-off melodic power metal/thrash affair it actually is. Another? Look no further than Sodom.

Now, I remember back in the day, even the smallest and most obscure of fanzines looked at Sodom as a big joke. Kreator was raw and violent. Destruction was quirky and progressive for a Teutonic blackthrash act. But Sodom? This went beyond posthumous designations as being more “blue collar” than their peers. They were sloppy, noisy, regressive…and laughed at by most even within the furthest reaches of the metal community.

But then came the second wave of black metal, and suddenly all these new, hardline acts became the focus of global attention (arguably more for their transgressions and terroristic aspects than their actual music, at least at the time). Where the hell did all this come from, people asked.

And folks like “Euronymous” were happy to explain. Those very atavistic acts everyone mocked, marginalized and all but ignored just a few years prior. Venom. Early Sepultura, Sarcofago and Vulcano. Kreator. Destruction. And especially…Sodom.

And a lot of us went back to those dusty tapes in the collection, or took another look at a band we all used to knock…and saw merit, perhaps for the first time. Damn, In the Sign of Evil and Persecution Mania actually had some strong material…and hell if that sloppiness and nasty vocals didn’t come off sounding obscure, sinister, bizarre…and kinda evil!

So here we are, many years on from that (and way too many spins of those classic discs to recount), and Sodom’s still kicking around. They’ve come a long way (too far, in fact) from those early classics and their sound…but on the other hand, they haven’t moved all that far at all.

Look at the Final Sign of Evil, where the entire original lineup went back in studio to rerecord (and in most cases, record for the first time!) all the material originally intended to appear on the full length album that time and funding reduced to an EP. No, it’s not as powerful as the original…but it sounds pretty damn close, given the remove of time between recordings!

That said, however, most recent Sodom has been…well, not as far removed from template as Onslaught, but definitely more modernized, almost polished, without even the Bay Area-leaning thrash melodicism of Agent Orange to their credit. The only thing holding ’em together is Tom Angelripper’s nasty blackened vocals, and that only goes so far.

But here we have a three track EP (well, two new studio tracks and a live version of a vintage Sodom classic)…and you know, for something a good 33 years removed from the band’s heyday? This don’t sound half bad, kid!

Don’t walk in expecting miracles – Expurse of Sodomy Mk II this ain’t. But yeah, this is pretty solid stuff for a modern era Sodom, with at least the title track bearing one of those vintage style riffs that just won’t quit or leave your head.

The debut and Guardians of the Flame (and subsequent Wait for the Night EP)? Great stuff, particularly Guardians (and Starr’s numerous projects and acts thereafter, throughout the 80’s and even with his recent Burning Starr comeback album, Stand Your Ground.

Of course, that was only the earliest work of these Long Island (say it as one word, accent on the “gi”) USPM pioneers.

Would-be Eric Adams and ivory tinkler Dave DeFeis continued on for a few decent albums (Age of Consent in particular, but Noble Savage also) and a few…overly ambitious ones (The Marriage of Heaven & Hell Pts. 1-2), before going over the edge into pretentious pomposity and losing the hooks and melodic underpinnings entirely (sorry, you lost me at that neverending, growly vox and long talky intros-bedecked House of Atreus thing). You can grab all the post-Starr stuff worth having* in one convenient box set, which is nice.

* plus Love Among the Ruins, which there’s really no excuse for.

So here we are in 2018…and surprise! Here comes another Virgin Steele box set, and it’s a big one.

Now, normally, when someone says “box set”, you’re figuring on repackaged albums, or perhaps a multi disc “greatest hits” with a few unreleased demos or B-sides as a selling point. Nope.

Well…sorta. But not really.

You do get both greatest hits albums (Hymns to Victory and Book of Burning) repackaged…sadly, we did not, which only becomes annoying in the case of the latter, which featured 5 new and exclusive songs alongside a number of re-recordings. Come on, you could have at least included that, guys…

But what we can all agree on and speak to (ahem) is the first three discs, two of which are entirely new and a third which is mostly orchestral reworkings of older Steele tracks. Nice stuff to be sure, but why not send the entire set out for review?

Anyway, this is, like a lot of De Feis’ work after the split with Starr, a bombastic yet decidedly uneven affair.

Moments work a whole hell of a lot better than the tuneless Atreus, with winning (if oddly over-intimate) moments like “psychic slaughter” and “hearts on fire”, but you’re going to have to deal with the fact that there’s a hell of a lot of piano solo business taking up the bulk of the collection.

Interestingly, it’s this very fact and minimalist setting which gives a head scratching questioning of just where the hell the man’s head is at, when you hear lyrics like “all of my girlfriends are dead…” on “Justine” or the entirely spoken “murder in high gloss relief”…

There’s also a lot of covers here, mainly of bluesy “classic rock”. We’re talking everything from a cover of Hendrix’ “little wing”, Zeppelin’s “no quarter” and a Doors suite that moves from “soul kitchen” to “when the music’s over” to “crawling king snake” and an all but unrecognizable take on Cream’s “spoonful”.

Hell, he even covers the intro (only) to Whitesnake’s “slow n’ easy” and Mother Love Bone’s “chloe dancer” and “gentle groove”, if you can believe that...

You’ll also note (and have to forgive, if you’re going to continue plowing through so much material from the man) some really strange performances from De Feis, who you may (and probably will) find, within the course of a single song, jumping from overused yowling gravelly howls (several times in a row at wholly inappropriate moments, mind!) to weirdly intimate? mocking? it’s hard to say…falsetto and general overemoting to an oddly threatening spoken word. Bottom line? If the photo shoot doesn’t make ya wonder if something’s a bit off, a lot of his vocals here will.

At least his piano skills remain undiminished, as shown on the solo bits of his seriously weird self-cover of “evil in her eyes”. He also continues to draw from unusual sources, well outside the realm of US power metal – what is “sister moon” if not early to mid 70’s Brill Building schmaltz/pop? And the old Porgy & Bess number “summertime”? Can’t say he’s being overly single minded.

Sometimes parts really work nicely, like the vocal harmonies that kick off “wake the dead”, while what follows will inevitably go off the rails. It’s not always about the full song (or fragment thereof – several of these are more vignettes, a minute long or thereabouts)…and while there is guitar work showing up here and there, understand this is 99% De Feis’ show world, and anyone and everyone else is just living in it.

Well, actually, if it were Show World, it might be more entertainingly sleazy. But that’s another story, and another decade or three back in time. But anyway.

So, will this box set appeal to old Virgin Steele fans, from the days when they were a far more straightforward US power metal act? No.

Is this is a great place to check out the band, for newcomers? HELL, NO.

But if you’re a Virgin Steele diehard, and were at least able to stick with the band up to Atreus (whether or not you made it through that one, we’ll count as irrelevant for the nonce), you may well appreciate hearing all these bizarre piano-based and strangely over-vocalized covers and intimate moments of sharing…what I really hope isn’t going on in the man’s head, some of this shit is disturbing. But hey.

While it’s huge and astronomically more listenable than House of Atreus Parts 1-36 (or so it felt…) and a lot less pretentious than Marriage of Heaven and Hell Parts 1-15, this is ultimately a strange and oddly personal batch of works, more well suited to the dedicated Virgin Steele fan than any more casual aficionado or newbie, both of who are advised to stay away, or at least count themselves warned in advance.

Boy, you haven’t heard a Sigh album this straightforwardly metal since Infidel Art!

Seriously…after the exploratory, almost Zappaesque syncretism that marked In Somniphobia (and to some extent, its far angrier predecessor Scenes From Hell)*, Heir to Despair finds a very 70’s, almost “occult rock” meets krautrock Sigh, all flutes and vocorders side by side with koto and shamisen, while very direct metal riffs (on “homo homini lupus”, almost power metal, before turning thrash) pound away.

* I simply can’t comment on Graveward, as it was never sent my way for coverage and managed to entirely slip under the radar therefore.

Mirai’s vocals alternate between clean, vocorded and raspy, so if Gallow’s Gallery was your thing, think of this as its more aggressive, somewhat psychedelicized cousin. Interestingly, Mika “Dr. Mikannibal”‘s also stay clean more or less throughout, with a three or four person high pitched vocal chorus approach predominating. And then there’s that pointedly traditional Japanese feel beneath, again hearkening back to Sigh’s earliest days…good stuff.

Where things go wrong is with the trilogy of “heresy” tracks, which are one part 70’s bubblegum top 40 and two parts early Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, Can or Faust…and by that, I mean the earliest works of each, all fritzing tubes and tone experimentation off those wall-sized synthesizers and Moogs. I guess the best of these is “heresy III”, but it goes beyond the usual degree of Sigh strangeness straight into inconsequentiality and weirdness.

Thankfully, “hands of the string puller” and the title cut are there to right this sinking ship, particularly the latter, which is easily the strongest track on the album.

The cover art is suitably pretty/bizarre, and overall this is another worthy effort in the Sigh canon…but you know something’s off when you’re sitting there saying, “where the fuck is Mika and her sax?”

But overall? Yeah, you’re pretty safe chalking another one up to the win column for these outre black metal cum psychedelic rock gone Zappa jazz/classical/prog pioneers.

We covered their Nocturnes and Requiems last February and…well, things aren’t looking so great, at least in terms of how we’re taking what they’re dishing out.

Despite hailing from retro-traditonal metal act White Wizzard (and OK, Iced Earth, which may be part of the problem), the feel here is far more depressive than the more uplifting, Sweet-style work we saw last time around.

Instead, this is practically Prophecy Productions baiting, vocally, with grim, almost dissonant multi-vocalled mourning and moaning predominating over sad acoustic and arpeggiated chord tracks that occasionally burst into miserable, emo-esque full band distorted affairs. I was vaguely reminded at times of Non-Fiction, but never with that peculiar mixture of melodicism and likeability that otherwise quite sorrowful act brought to the table.

To judge solely by this album? Witherfall just sucks, like the final album or two from the Devil’s Blood serving more as music to slit your wrists to than anything to actually enjoy.

And this is supposed to be power metal, or anything equivalent?

Yeah, you may want to go back and check out Nocturnes and Requiems and make your opinion of the band from there. This one’s got more reek than an open dumpster full of limburger and bleu cheese rotting under the hot summer sun.

NEXT?!?

Circuitry – Untouched By Human Hands (November 16)

Djent. Unexpect with some actual melodic moments and hooks strewn about and more of a punk/emo/metalcore vibe and approach informing the whole thing.

And that’s actually what saves Circuitry from the expected toss into the Pile of Dead Bards…because they’re not the expected aggro screamo married to Mike Pattonesque utter atonality you’d expect.

Instead…you get plenty of glimmers of what could have been a really strong, melodically inclined, hook-infected modern punk to metalcore spectrum act…whose works were fucked entirely by some misguided devotion to atonal runs and lead lines that only occasionally work like they should.

Somebody give these kids a ‘lude or something…they need to calm the fuck down!

Maybe then we’ll get the band they clearly could be, rather than the jumbled conflation of excellent and shitty elements they actually are.

Life is all about choices. And to make a music to life metaphor, Circuitry are quite obviously good kids who got…er, mixed up with a very wrong crowd.

Drop the annoying djent affectations, you’d have a worthy support act to the mighty Killswitch in the making.

Unearth – Extinction(s) (Century Media) (November 23)

Okay. On one hand, promo materials push these guys as “NWOAHM” pioneers. Sure, that label implies shit like Avenged Sevenfold as well, but so does it appear to include the likes of Killswitch Engage and the better end of the metalcore crowd. May be same shit, different day to a lot of ya, but I’m seeing no comparison there…

And on the other hand, we’re treated to this classic line: “Like Pantera and the other greats who’ve inspired them.”

Let that one sink in.

Fucking Pantera, and “other greats.”

So. Are we talking metalcore standardbearers? Or dogshit aggro/groove, which is about a half step removed from all things nu-?

oh, it won’t take more than a few seconds to figure out the answer to that Sphinxian riddle. Just let the needle drop anywhere on Extinction(s). Then fight the urge to rip the needle perpendicular-wise across the grooves, and drop it onto another track. Go ahead, give it one more just for the hell of it, I fucking dare ya.

DUCK AND COVER!!!

…holy SHIT, that one just EXPLODED on contact with the fire…

I keep warning you guys, management takes zero responsibility for those who choose to stand within shrapnel distance of the Flaming Pyre of Dead Bards. We simply recieve too many subpar to utter dogshit bands in the course of our monthly reviews to offer any insurance against fire damage or being pelted with sharp vinyl
chunks…

Fuck this. NEXT?

The Wizards – Rise Of The Serpent (High Roller Records) (November 9)

Spanish “occult rockers” are back with another album full of semi-swiped Danzig riffs, 70’s rock Thin Lizzy dual leads and Hour of 13 gone stoner rock vibe.

We’d covered their Full Moon in Scorpio last March, and are glad to report the production has improved dramatically since that earlier album, as has the band’s confidence.

Leads in particular are quite assured, and while only a few bands can really carry the torch of “occult rock” for more than an album or two (Paul Chain, Blood Ceremony and the Devil’s Blood, take your bows), The Wizards are clearly staking a claim for themselves here.

I liked it well enough, and chances are if your interest is piqued by the aforementioned, you will too.

Members of Front Beast and Cross Vault join forces for this traditional doom affair.

Vocals are dead on for the style, guitars are simplistic but work (though that’s also the problem – the tone isn’t fat enough, they’d be better served by either doubling the guitars in studio or getting a second guitarist in the band, period), and the vibe is somewhere between Hour of 13, Crypt Sermon and Reagers era Saint Vitus, arguably with a touch of Count Raven or Johan Langvist era Candlemass for good measure.

Unfortunately, the guitar tone and minimalist vibe leave the band far closer to House of 13 with arguable hints of early Danzig than any of the other bands mentioned, which relate more to Gerrit Mutz’ vocals than anything the rest of the band is doing. It’s pretty damn basic, even for trad doom…as you might expect from the guy behind the oft laughable Front Beast.

At least this time, nobody’s laughing – this actually works quite well, if you don’t mind a lot less bombast and scope than usual for the genre.

All caveats aside, I liked this one very much indeed.

Cold Night For Alligators – Fervor (Long Branch Records) (November 9)

Quirky prog act that leans more aggro/nu dumbo neanderthalic riffing in the verses before going all Dream Theater in the chorus.

In better moments, the verses lean more emo/metalcore, but this also brings all that screamo bullshit on the vocal end (as in “canaille”).

Ultimately, prog/power fans and those who lean more -core/emo/aggro should walk away equally disappointed, as these Danes never quite settle into one camp or the other (though if I had to play umpire and call this game, I’d say they’re far more of and inclined towards the latter’s juvenalia than the former’s overly polished hoity-toityness).

Are they the sort of band you run to flip the dial over? No, not at all.

But I certainly couldn’t see anyone getting excited about this rather jumbled affair, either.

Jonestown – Dyatlov (Long Branch Records) (November 16)

Oy, another screamo act, with detuned riffing and weird djenty atonal lead lines.

Hey, look, Metal Hammer named thse guys in their top 50 albums of 2016, and no less than 3 of their editorial staff called it “debut album of the year”, or so promo materials inform us.

Which is why the only metal mag or site yours truly will even give a nod of respect to is the UK’s Zero Tolerance, who we at least occasionally agree with…

Seriously, these people don’t seem to know their ass from their elbow…it’s like having a hundred modern day Circus magazines floating around, for chrissake! Look, who’s on the cover this week? Motley Crue, Bon Jovi, Motley Crue, Poison or Motley Crue? Yay, metal!

(shakes head in complete dejection and disbelief at what people take as gospel)

So yeah, these guys suck some serious ass, nuff said.

WHIZZ!!! Straight to the Pile of Dead Bards, let that eternal Flame keep on consigning shitty albums like this to the ashes from whence they came.

Next?

22 – You Are Creating (Long Branch Records) (November 23)

Very strange indie act that fancy themselves prog rockers.

This is a double album, which gives them the latitude to really fuck with the listener, at times working a likeably straightforward, melodic indie rock thing that almost feels Killers-like (“inspec”, “call me trimtab”, the Queen fetishism of “sum of parts”, “autumn stream”, “chroma key”)…at others, losing the thread entirely and drifting off into somnambulistically unstructured balladeering (“akira”, “ectypes”).

Still again, others fall into pointless ambient electronica (“node 1”, “node 2”), lazy James meets Radioheadlike Britpop (the title track, “a mutation of thrushes”, “dillemann’s clarity”) and a final few lapse into busy atonality, riffs flying all over but never gelling or making any real melodic or harmonic sense (“adam kadmon”, “staying embodied”, “V”).

As a result, the album per se comes off at best jumbled, but more pointedly, aimless, when that first batch of tracks mentioned actually bore some real promise.

This is the sort of album I’d actually recommend getting digitally, so you can grab the 4 or 5…er, Killer(s) songs, and skip the detritus that makes up the bulk of this emptied warehouse full of seemingly unrelated (or at least, extremely disparate) recordings.

Take that as you will, it’s impossible to review something quite this all over the damn place.

De-Arrow – S/T (20th Century Music) (November 16)

Aussie demo-only AOR act finally compiles and restores all their 80’s work for this much welcomed compilation.

Managed by none other than Runaways impresario Kim Fowley (which in itself bears a number of associations, both good and bad…), these guys are the epitome of 80’s training montage/end credits upbeat feel good hard rock/hair metal.

The mere fact that I’d never heard of these guys back in the day amazes, but then again, who says all Aussie acts crossed over Stateside…particularly without a record deal to give ’em the boost?

Even so, why they weren’t at least utilized in some cult/drive in flick or teen sex comedy of the era is absolutely baffling – a mere listen to “angel” alone should bear up just how good an act these guys actually were.

Granted, not every song is up to the challenge that defining track lays down…but neither is any of these simple filler. It’s one of those rare albums…well, gatherings of demos that really has no weak spots. Even the ballad is passable, and that says a lot.

You dig all that retro stuff, the sort you simply can’t find in today’s more jingle-oriented depressive dumbo pop and rock music?

Yeah, me too. So what the fuck’s keeping you from picking this one up, already?

WICKED GARDEN – “Already Gone” (Shock Records / Vanity Music Group)

Savage Garden? Yeah, I remember those losers.

Couldn’t name a song if you paid me, but some record store counter or other granted me a Savage Garden bumpersticker, which I wound up sneaking over to my drummer’s (then) place where he lived with his horrid new wife (who’d singlehandedly kiboshed any chances of our ever reforming the band or even jamming out every now and again by cutting him off from every friend he ever had) and plastering that fucker right across his car bumper.

Oh, yeah, I got a call about that. “I had to scrape that shit off, man!” uh, yeah, that’s the whole point of the joke, ya dope. I still wonder how long he drove around with everyone thinking he was a huge Savage Garden fan…ah, fun times.

So it looks like these guys hail from Vegas, and they’re doing some indie thing…according to the promo materials. It’s actually more of a loud blues rock, but leaning more towards 90’s grunge than 70’s “classic rock”. “I-15 South” is really forgettable, “already gone is probably their catchiest, and the classily titled “hey bitch” sounds like a far less catchy song by my buddy’s rival band circa the early to mid 90’s. Actually, he had a song called “bitch” that used to piss off all the ladies in the audience whenever it was trotted out at shows, but it was so much better than this one here.

And…that’s it! Pretty standard stuff, nothing all that noteworthy. Sorta listenable for the type, but honestly? Who cares? Nobody’s going to get excited about this one, which at best counts as an also ran that you won’t flip the dial over.

Who knows, maybe Savage Garden was a better act, after all…

At the very least, I’m sure they didn’t have lyrics like “if you wanna be a whore, go ahead and give yourself away, cause I don’t love you anymore!”

Stoner doom, with gnarly dual vocals. The one guy is gargle-screaming, the other is deep throat belching, like some ersatz take on very early Carcass over Autopsy gone stoner rock riffs (which at times go full on Kyuss, “blood freak” being a perfect example).

What’s too bad is that the guitar tone is so throaty and overdistorted on the more doomy moments, it had me thinking Winter…but no, this is waaaaayyyy too fast, the vox too silly, the stoner moments too frequent and prominent.

It’s not bad at all, really…just feels like it could use a lot of tweaking to get it right.

Bedlem – Back to Bedlem (October 31)

Former live member of Trivium starts his own act.

As he’s a drummer, the drums are front and center in the mix, here, which is always a nice change, but while a solid player, the guy’s no standout (or at least doesn’t really take the chance to show off), sticking more to tight adherence to and light syncopation around the fairly basic detuned riffing.

You can tell he’s accomplished, and I always appreciate hearing the drums more prominently on albums (Metal Church’s debut is fucking amazing, simply for the drum track!).

I just never heard anything that said “standout” either.

The band themselves? Meh.

But I’d like to hear this guy really going for it, Tony Williams style.

I’ll bet he could pull something like that off, if only he’d try.

Stew – HOT (June 1)

Old fashioned blues rock, sorta in the vein of Stevie Ray Vaughn, Jeff Healey and Robert Cray, but with more piss and vinegar than the latter pair.

Apparently they pick their noses a whole hell of a lot (“dig for gold”), but aside from that, if you dig Hendrix’ more clean and bluesy moments (like a lot of those posthumous studio releases we’re seeing in recent years) and the heyday of Budgie, you’ll be in familiar territory here.

Personally, I liked “if this will be”, which after a fairly standard Hendrix cum Stevie Ray intro turns (however briefly) into a sweet jazzy sorta vintage R&B thing that should remind ya a bit of the Third Eye and Weird Scenes podcast themes.

Similar territory, at least, and while it doesn’t last half long enough even within the track itself (which devolves back to safer territory after the solo), represents a HUGE step up from the far more straightforward blues rock of the other three tracks.

Good playing, quite listenable…especially that golden midsection (it’s a lot more than a middle eight, give ’em that much) on “if this will be”.

L.A. indie act. As you can probably tell from the title, they lean well into the pretentious range, an impression hardly mollified by their use of mandolin (“aphrodite” in particular), 90’s Britpop affectations (“dancing twig” stands out in that respect), faux-ska/world music ones (“diabolic angel”, which brings head up their own ass types like David Byrne and Sting to mind, only to be safed by a more distorted and catchy chorus than either of those clowns ever stumbled across in their highfalutin’ solo work) or the cloyingly “clever” “Tom Waits for her” (which comes complete with silly Waits vocal impression and singsong child’s toy-style instrumentation).

Even so, you could make an argument that “dancing twig” was attempting (and failing) to evoke the pagan folk vibe of Elvenking in their better days, and “diabolic angel” is by far the catchiest track here, for all its teeth gritting faux-ska affectations…so all is not lost, even in the darker moments herein.

If you’ve paid any attention to the “college rock/alternative” scene in the 80’s and 90’s, suffice to say we’ve all heard much worse. These guys have potential, moments that work quite well and a few actual hooks under their belts.

It’s not an actual crime that precious little of it gels or hits the intended target.

Again, has its moments.

Katie Knipp – Take It With You (November 7)

Quirkily vocalled take on the Bonnie Raitt school of blues cum torch song.

Quieter moments (“last man out”, “metro in Paris”) can get pretty artsy-fartsy, evoking everything from PJ Harvey and the oversexed Liz Phair to Peggy Lee and Julie Delpy’s self titled album (remember her song to Ethan Hawke in Before Sunset? Yeah. She did an album.)

One thing this is (quite thankfully) not is one of those irritatingly abrasive 90’s Lilith Fair affairs. I won’t name names, but if it was a female or band thereof in the 90’s attacking the male population Xena-style while pretending to be “sensitive” and have actual feelings (beyond rage and “me first”-ism, that is), chances are you’re hitting the target nadir under discussion here.

And praise be to whatever gods or goddesses you worship that Knipp doesn’t need to hang her hat on those tired and unwelcome tropes to show her inner strength and worth as a musician.

So if you’re asking for a bottom line, is this the sort of thing I listen to? Well, no.

But was this a damn good album, with likeably sassy (and often sexy) lyrics and a quirky yet engaging performance from the lady in question, bearing more in common spiritually with the torch song and old fashioned Southern blues (and yes, I’m thinking the female artists primarily…but that ain’t no putdown) than the more arty hipster affectations you’d expect?

Hell, yeah!

I liked this lady, make no bones about it.

If you’re looking for something very different from what we tend to cover here, but well worth your time, and likely to demand repeat listens, even well down the road?

Here’s your cue.

Splendidula – Post Mortem (Inverse Records) (December 14)

OK, my play of this one kicked off with “mortem”, which sounds for all the world like the sort of then-recent band you’d discover on Cleopatra comps like the Goth Box back in the mid 90’s.

Arguably, you could even cross this one over to Projekt territory, with all the violin, acoustic tribal drumming and unaccompanied female vocals…hell, it’s practically playing in Mors Syphilitica territory. All well and good, to be sure…but aren’t they marketing themselves as “metal”?

Oh, wait, here comes “nami”, which is closer to a gothic doom sort of thing, far more aggressive and sloppy sounding. Still good, but very different from “mortem”…

This odd uncertainty about where Splendidula actually stand continues, with the Mephisto Walz-like “too close to me”, where Kristien Cools is so blatantly trying to be Christianna, it’s practically actionable. Good by me, definitely…but shouldn’t those guitars be cleaner, more processed and washed in chorus and reverb?

And so it goes, with “aturienoto” being the other real standout on the more gothic rock leaning side and “stream of consciousness” bearing more of a metallic heritage, at least riffwise…while Cools leans somewhere between The Shroud’s Lydia Fortner, Switchblade Symphony’s Tina Root and the aforementioned Christianna throughout.

If you’re asking, folks, I’d tone the metal elements wayyyy the fuck down and settle for something much closer to gothic rock proper.

It’s not like Christian Death, Mephisto Walz, Nosferatu and The Wake were exactly soft selling the guitar work…the overemphasis on distortion and sloppy grungelike noise tone only serves to distract from the band you really are and should be.

Still works…but far too “metal” for the goth crowd (at least the ones I came up with, no accounting for rainbow haired “cybergoth” types!) and probably too authentically gothic rock for the metal crowd.

It’s very underproduced in the sense that you can tell it’s a one man bedroom thing, and those distorted guitar bits are so loud and crackling that they go well beyond a bit of signal bleed to drown out both growly vox and drums (tinny Casio keyboards are wheedling toned enough to be heard amidst the din, but even so).

If you can get past the low quality demo sound and feel of this, it definitely bears an oppressively grim yet contemplative feel well suited to late Fall/early Winter solo walks in the woods.

So that brings us to what may be a surprising conclusion. Because all objective gripes aside, I did very much like this…even when it goes a tad too Prophecy to Projekt on tracks like “lullaby”.

The Psycho Season – Grunge River (Inverse) (November 23)

Yep, the title is right. This is grunge, alright, albeit with some more aggressive stoner rock piss and vinegar (almost to the point where it borders on metal).

Same noisy guitar tone, same lousy bent note riffs, same moan n’ whine vocals…at least this guy doesn’t yowl out of the corner of his mouth (all of ’em) or make weird goose noises (hello, Eddie Vedder)…

They even cover Alice in Chains’ “we die young”, and you can barely tell it apart from the rest of this. Yep, grunge.

If you were too young to live through that shit (and therefore find some value in it) or are weirdly nostalgic for wimpy guys, overly butch women, heroin and flannel, you may find a lot more value here than the rest of us do.

Two losers going by the pseudos of “Morbid” and “Angel” pulled together this half-super awkward synthpop, half detuned lunkhead riffs and Cookie Monster vomit vox abomination, and it’s simply too hilariously stupid to even attempt to take seriously.

Not kidding, you deserve to hear this one. Just don’t have a drink in your hand or whatever, because you’re going to spew it all over anyone standing within a 10 foot radius from spontaneous laughter.

Yeah, there’s no way I could consign this to the Pyre. Too much comedic value, however unintentional on their part.

(stifles another snicker)

…Next?

Musta Risti – Svart Records (November 16)

Stoner doom, sort of in the same ballpark as Witchfinder General, 70’s Pentagram or post-Vol. 4 Ozzy-era Sabbath.

Goes nowhere, but the guitar tone and feel are right, as is the paper thin, muted production.

Just look at the bands referenced as comparatives, and you tell me whether this is worth looking into.

Both albums reissued here feature members of Krieg, Leviathan and the infamous Blake Judd of Nachmysticum and internet ripoff fame (shades of that Threatin kid!).

Want more? The guy from Xasthur was on the debut (only), and their third album (not reissued here) tagged in Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore, if you remember that surprise announcement.

Their sound is a weird mix of experimental drone, almost doom in a way – probably why Moore showed interest in the first place – and that abominably stupid new school black metal where frontmen howl like a Ricola pitchman.* Hey, where’s your lederhosen and alpine horn, assholes?

It’s pretty obvious which elements work here, and which deserve to be tossed into the nearest grain thresher.

* on the first album, they’re more raw and nasty sounding, and there’s more of an aggressively straightforward black metal feel…thus it’s second album Monument to Times End that holds more interest.**

** except in terms of bass lines, which are more prominent and doomily melodic on the self titled. Couldn’t they mix all the good elements and dump the crap on one of these albums?

Monument to Time End comes with a few extra live tracks, most or all of which append to the better half of the Twilight equation. Too bad they didn’t secure the rights to the third album, I’d have liked to have heard what, if anything, Moore brought to the table.

As is, a bit of a mix. Love the bass work on the first album…prefer the doomier, more droning tracks on the second.

So here’s the infamous Blake Judd himself, working his own long running act Nachmysticum. First up, we have a reissue of 2008’s Assassins, which crosses a postpunk/gothic rock aesthetic (particularly evident on the three part “seasick”, which comes off vaguely Virgin Prunes or Theatre of Hate at points), straight up traditional metal (check out that gallop riff halfway through “one of these nights”) and black metal…arguably with touches of singalong power metal (the title cut) (!)

It’s actually surprisingly good, which is not something you want to say about a notorious conman, actually arrested and charged for his malfeasance towards fans…nonetheless, there it is. This is a very good album by any standard of black or black leaning metal.

Not quite so consistent overall, but still bizarrely likeable enough to merit at least a listen if not an outright leap of faith purchase comes their most recent work, the four track EP Resilient (apparently there’ll be a 2 disc “digibook” with one extra track and a batch of live ones, but these were not sent out for review).

Of these four tracks, one’s just one of those pointless intros (“conversion”), another is a curious attempt at American gothic roots rock (sort of like Sono Morti, but as far removed from that cowpunk aesthetic as it is from black metal) (“desert illumination”).

Things pick up a bit for the title track, which is a moody, synth-heavy bit of depressive black metal, and the highlight, “silver lanterns”, which is far more straightforward and melodic. Either way, this whole EP is pretty damn contemplative and grim, so it works quite well despite its brevity and the oddness of its closing track.

Hell, I’ll even give it…and both albums, in fact…an unabashed raise of the horns in salute.

I’d just suggest you get ’em from the label or a trustworthy distro/retail outlet, rather than soliciting from Judd and the band directly.

Cough.

“…Yeah, man, I promise! You’ll get ’em soon! (snicker)”

Twilight Fauna – Where Birds Sing My Name (Flowing Downward)

Whoa, hold up. Is that banjo I’m hearing? Fiddle too?

Now, I’m going to tell ya, we’ve been binging on The Dukes of Hazzard for a few months, now. Got the box set for the wife a few years back (when everyone was flipping out trying to censor innocuous business like the box top to this set) and we blow through an episode a day over breakfast – sadly this puts us near the end of Season 6 already (yep, we had to skip over some of them Coy & Vance ones in the notorious Season 5…phew! The scabs were pretty bad…*)

* there were actually several temporary cast replacements in the course of the show when various members went on strike or tried to start their own series, but most were acceptable…except for these two clowns. How ripped off did those cartoon folks feel having to use them for The Dukes spinoff? Particularly when the showrunners realized this just wasn’t working and brought Schneider and Wopat back before the season even ended?

But anyway, everyone knows the Waylon Jennings theme song and related show soundtrack, full of chicken pickin’, pedal steel guitars, fiddles and banjo. So I’m well used to this sound by now, almost feels like home after a few months straight of exposure…and therefore, it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise to say, hey, this is pretty neofolk/traditional country (almost bluegrass, even) on “the path home”, “as Autumn turns to Spring” and “crying shame”.

At this point, however strange it may sound in the context of what we usually cover here, I was very comfrotable with those three tracks, and was curious to see how exactly this Paul Ravenwood fella was going to mix that sound and approach with that of black metal.

Who knows, a few months away from the Dukes, we may be knocking the banjo thing again…but right at this point in time, we’re OK with it.

Strangely, the problem here is the reverse of what we said with Lunn when we covered Kentucky. Because unlike his efforts to blend two extremely disparate genres, Ravenwood makes zero attempt whatsoever. So one track will be banjos and fiddles a’pickin’ and a fiddlin’ away, then BAM! It’s a raw, abrasive black metal track. Then back again.

Like jello and pizza or french fries and caviar, this is a case of two entirely unrelated sounds (not even “genres” within a larger common soundspace…we’re talking two very distant musical idioms, here) being put on the same plate.

You may be hungry enough to eat both, rather than devouring one and feeding the other en toto to the family dog sniffing around for scraps under the table. But you probably already know they don’t mix, and won’t eat them together…and if you actually do have both, even sequentially, you just know you’re going to pay for it later.

I’ll leave a bottle of kaopectate by the toilet for ya, in case you decide to indulge.

It’s gonna be a loooooong night if you do…

Abstract Void – Back To Reality (Flowing Downward)

Damn, this is nice!

Some enterprising young bedroom act noted the recent rise of synthwave (and lazerpunk, and all sorts of related synthpop genres) and decided to pull that sound and…er, “instrumentation” into a darker, more contemplative direction.

That’s right, it’s “Cascadian black metal” of the most introspective variety, done entirely on synthesizer. There are occasional shrieked/processed vox, but they’re mixed low enough that you can either ignore ’em or appreciate how well they blend in with those keyboard tones and drum machine “blastbeat” blurps.

This is the first time I’ve run across a musician who remains true to his style and orientation, while still paying an easily recognizable and dead on tribute to a very different, even inimical genre of music, but (and here’s the key) without betraying either.

Seriously – you can ignore the last two paragraphs and just call this a dark synthwave affair…or you can say “hey, that’s weird…a synthwave attempt at black metal”, and be equally right, and leave with both parties (assuming the black metaller is not so rigid as to dismiss the very thought out of hand) reasonably satisfied that “they got it right”.

Really, surprisingly quite good.

Selvans – Faunalia (Avantgarde Music) (November 2)

We’d covered this Italian (post-) black metal act’s split with Downfall of Nur early last year and much preferred their half of the split to their compatriots for all the (comparative) innovation and pushing at the borders and limitations just enough to please the more orthodox as well as those looking for something a bit out of the ordinary.

Here they continue to play with elements suggesting both native folk and prog, while still remaining fairly standardized, darkly melodic black metal at core…no mean feat, that.

Some tracks, like opener “ad malum finem” or “anna perenna”, push a bit too hard at the borders, offering a mix of sub-Cradle of Filth organ/symphonic dramatics and folk music with a vaguely (spaghetti) western feel.

Others, like “requiem aprutti” or “magna mater major mons” are far closer to template, while still other tracks drag in some very obvious regional influence (like “notturno peregrinar”, which practically feels like a black metal tarantella).

I don’t know what the fuck we’re supposed to make of the noisy mess that is “phersu”, though…

So does it deliver on the promise shown on the earlier split? Well, yes and no. There’s certainly enough of the positives shown last time around, plus a few light curveballs thrown just to keep listener interest (the aforementioned “notturno”).

But then we have to deal with “phersu”, and the score drops faster than Trump’s approval rating after he started whipping out all those illegal “executive orders” within weeks of taking office…

In the end, a split decision. Interesting enough to keep an eye on, maybe next time around will continue to trend upwards.

Who the hell knows.

Gravkväde – Grav|aska (Avantgarde Music) (November 2)

“It is likely that you have never heard of Gravkväde.”

So begins the promo writeup on this rather Fleurety-esque Swedish duo, who bring all the unwelcome experimentation of that band and marry it to the likes of early Abruptum and the depressive weirdness of Bethlehem.

Tracks like “sorgeakt” and “kottets plaga” are slow, spare and full of annoying shriek vocals, with ringing atonal arpeggiations over a very deliberate, underproduced base chordal structure. It’s almost like a pair of teenagers just picking up their instruments recorded a session fiddling around aimlessly in their basement “studio”…

The other two tracks are more straightforwardly black metal, but still sound like crap (the production and vox again) and are quite generic…I’m thinking stuff like Ancient here, but just pull the most snooze inducing, did I just listen to something? in one ear and out the other bullshit black metal you’ve ever heard, and use that as a direct comparison…you’ll probably find it’s quite close to the low bar set herein.

Is this among the worst we’ve covered, or even worthy of a toss into the Pile of Dead Bards? Nah. It’s listenable, particulary on the weirder, more spare tracks.

Yep, it’s sorta like “war metal” or “bestial black”, just without the consistency, tone or stylistic tropes.

Instead of gas masks and satanic business under muddy production and relentlessly driving, grindcore style riffs, you get…open space, ringing guitars and a lot of noise.

Did I mention this one sucks?

OK, because it sucks.

Next?

Marsh Dweller – Wanderer (Eihwaz Recordings) (October 19)

We’d covered their The Weight of Sunlight a few years back and much appreciated all the Viking-style bombast, marveling that a one man band could hack such an expansive sound.

So…what happened?

All is not lost, there are two tracks that at least pass muster. But the fact that one of them is a vocal-free ambient closer (“wander IV”) and the other track transcends a questionable two minutes of ennui to become something far more dramatic and far reaching (“fall”) doesn’t exactly bode well.

The rest of this…well, there are moments in most tracks, but it’s a bit of a struggle to get past all the belch vox and almost groove-style dumbo riffs to get to the good parts. “Wander I”, for example, doesn’t get listenable until you’re over 4 minutes in to the damn track…and who’s going to hang around that long?

A misstep that still shows promise, but which similarly demands a major rework if they’re…well, OK, he’s to make the grade next time around.

Carnal Forge – Gun to Mouth Salvation (Vicisolum Productions)

You know, with a moniker like “carnal forge”, you’d think they’d be working some sort of melodeath. You know, like their obvious inspiration in late period Carcass?

Nope.

Overly pissed off, snarly-growly vocalled modern thrash on the point of collapse but without any of the fun, authentic vintage feel of acts like Exumer or Blood Feast.

Instead, this is one seriously overproduced modern thrash affair…and as typical for this sort of thing, kinda yawn inducing for all it’s screaming in your face and beating the listener over the head with would-be Exodus by way of Vio-Lence (but all bowlderized and modernized in tone) riffs.

Yeah, like those supposedly “big exciting crowdpleaser” fight scenes in all those crappy superhero films, this is literally putting me to sleep.

Don’t believe me? Ask the wife.

Character business, smaller scale acting? At full attention. Explosions, screaming, fireballs and armies filling the screen? Snoring loudly and jarred awake by an elbow to the ribs. I’m sorry, that shit just bores the living fuck out of me.

Case in point.

(yawn, stretch)

Someone, throw this one on one of those white noise relaxation tapes, willya? It’s really doing the job right now. More reviews tomorrow.

Nope. Not kidding in the least.

Yeah, I know it’s still light out. Night…

Slovenians – Al dente (Pogo Records)

Straightforward, tried and true hardcore punk of the real variety (not the atonal screamo shit that seems to have misappropriated the genre of late) out of Belgium, of all places.

It’s fast, punchy, more than a bit melodic and pulls in the expected gang choruses, and more than just a little indebted to Bad Religion, which becomes even more obvious when they slow things down to more of a 90’s rock vibe for a few tracks.

At their best, I guess you could say there’s some Motorhead at play as well – they certainly tick off all those “crossover” boxes that you’ll remember from the mid to late 80’s thrash/punk genre blender, albeit with far more of a 90’s Bad Religion to indie/grunge spectrum stylistically.

The faster, more directly punk tracks (like the first three) are the real winners here…the rest is acceptable enough.

They’re giving it away for free at their bandcamp, so nothing ventured, nothing gained.

ABSTRACT RAPTURE – Hollow Motion (December 15)

Okay, at this point, it must be asked. Do you kids out there, the up and comers just starting your musical careers…do you really think you need to “sound hard”?

You know, all the dogshit you grew up with, the sugar substitutes that you were fed in place of the real deal, all that aggro, groove, grunge and nu- shit? Growly/screamo vox, chugging, overly detuned, knuckle dragging riffing where you can barely tell the guitars from the bass, tonally?

Because honestly? Most of us in the world of metal (much less the goths and the punks) could do without ever hearing this shit again. There’s more than enough Five Finger Death Punch, Pantera and Slipknot albums out there for that crowd…we certainly don’t need you to add to the canon of crap that represents.

Case in point. There are moments (like around 4 minutes into “a promise from the ghouls”) where things slow down to a vaguely indie/prog vibe…but the rest? Yeah.

Case in point.

Fuck it, not even going to waste energy tossing this one into the Pyre. I’m gonna torch this son of a bitch right up here.

Hand me that blowtorch.

ORION DUST – Legacy (November 9)

We’d covered their Duality earlier this year, and the French dreampop progsters are back again, with an album that’s…well, even more laid back, mellow, almost world music in feel.

As noted last time around, this is some seriously strange stuff, hard to pigeonhole or describe…but this one feels even more off than the last one. Very sparse acoustics, occasional electronic noises, rarified light female vocals, sometimes (but far from “usually”) building to a light, My Bloody Valentine as filtered through The Darling Buds sort of indie shoegaze/dreampop.

Always light in tone, always soft and airy, never even close to depressive or dark. Could be a plus, depending on what you’re looking for…

Yeah, I was accepting of what I was hearing, but kind of lost in a territory I seldom if ever tread within the borders of.

WE ARE THE CATALYST – “The Code” (November 6)

Generic but pleasant enough Lacuna Coil knockoff, with more of an electronic basis to their sound.

One track, catchy enough for the type.

Spielbergs – “4AM” (By The Time It Gets Dark) (November 2)

We covered, and very much enjoyed, these Swedish indie rockers’ Distant Star back in April…here’s a new single in advance of a full length album.

It’s pretty strong, and very 80’s/early 90’s in vibe, somewhere between the achingly open but positive toned feel of Matthew Sweet and the lush, driving feel of bands like Inspiral Carpets or even, at a stretch, earlier REM.

I like this one quite a bit…here’s hoping the album lives up to the promise of all they’ve delivered so far.

INHUME – Exhume: 25 Years of Decomposition (XENOKORP) (December 7)

Generic but listenable (and reasonably well produced!) grindcore in the Terrorizer/Repulsion vein – at least for the first 9 or 10 tracks.

The bass is surprisingly audible, the drums sound good when not working the tirelessly drab blastbeat thing, there’s even a few audible riffs in there every so often – thus the Repulsion nod.

Thereafter, the production style changes, the guitar tone gets fatter, the bass disappears, the vox get deeper and throatier. It’s not as deep or film obsessed as Mortician, but it gets pretty damn boring…particularly when the pig noise shit kicks in around “blood sperm shit” (yeah, you see where this is going…)

Later tracks like “zombie grinder” get the worst production of all, all mids and hollowness. You feel like you’re getting flushed down a toilet, listening to this.

Too bad they didn’t stick with whatever studio or producer they had for “tiamat” through “meatcleaver”…if they had, this one would get a nod for standing above the usual grindcore crowd by a step or two.

But the better part of this is taken up by the sort of noisy, pig noise-afflicted blur that the grind scene seems to be gravitating towards more and more of late…and that’s not a good thing.

Sectorial – VYR (Noizr Productions) (November 9)

Ukranian black/death act. Pretty inconsequential except for their Kroda-like use of traditional instrumentation, which normally would elevate this sort of thing beyond the workaday.

Unfortunately, their actual music (i.e. their black/death compositions) are pretty…meh. So you get this sort of Kroda/Hunok thing going on with the winds, mouth harp and string instruments, which sounds pretty cool…but all this annoying BLEEAHH BUUAAAHH GYAAHHH! shit over generic, pounding chords and blastbeats distracting and pissing the listener off beneath it.

Advice? Give up the “black metal” affectations and go full on acoustic Manegarm, you’d be a great Ren Faire act or something.

Too bad. I did really like the trad bits.

The Mound Builders – S/T (Failure Records and Tapes) (January 18)

Thick and heavy stoner/sludge guitars, almost leaning doom at points. The problem? You’ve got it, Sludgelord Records-style fat guy belching his “man-sized” sandwich up all over his unkempt beard “vocals”.

Goddamn, man…what the fuck?!?

Did you really think fucking Pantera would sound good over a Kyuss meets CoC (with vague hints of Sabbath) base? Because it sure as fuck doesn’t. Not even in your wildest dreams does this work.

Another band that shoots itself in the foot solely due to a stubborn reluctance to got out and hire an actual vocalist.

Now tag that on to a wholly inappropriate groove gone atonal/experimental riffing, with light stoner rock elements thrown in just for a laugh.

(sigh)

Well, it’s from Indonesia, and it seems that a lot of acts from that area tend to favor incredibly harsh vox and raw, violent riffing.

Whatever. Doesn’t work, no point to it.

Next?

Bane – Esoteric Formulae (Black Market Metal Label) (November 30)

Oh, joy. Black/death again, this time out of Montreal. But they’re actually Serbians. Go figure.

I like how Rotting Christ is named as a comparative act in the promo writeup. Um…no. No, not at all.

(long pause, a few more tracks spin)

Okay, now I see what they’re saying, there. Some of the riffing around the middle of the album does have a more traditional heavy metal vibe to it. “Beneath the black Earth”, “bringer of pandimensional disorder”, “reign in chaos”…yeah, that’s it. Those three tracks do bear relation to Rotting Christ, for the reasons noted above.

But overall? Typically irritating and atonal black/death.

Gets a reprieve from the usual sentence due to those three tracks.

RIFFLORD – 7 Cremation Ground / Meditation (STB Records) (December 1)

South Dakota gives us this weird act. The album kicks off with dobro-driven roots rock ala Badlands (“seven”), drifts into some weird cross between Marilyn Manson and grunge that suddenly turns Motorheadlike punk before dropping into a doomy Sabbath riff (“dead flower child”).

Got any pimply faced teenage boys in the house? They’ll love this one.

NEXT?!?!

Runescarred – “Being God” (December 6)

Well, that was fast.

After last month’s rather nonplussed review of their cover of apparent Iron Maiden track “moonchild” (which falls well beyond our cutoff date for Maiden, and thus lacks any muster as a comparative), we gave the nod to their EP in a special addendum, exploring the differences between many members’ earlier act Dead Earth Politics and the new band that bears the moniker of one of their better tracks.

Here, again, frontman Ven Scott continues along the general vein of a Ralf Scheepers crossed with Masterplan’s Rick Altzi (perhaps with a hint of Lonewolf’s over-dramatics to boot), while the band offers a quirky but likeable prog/power oriented sound that really kicks in at the solo (which feels vaguely akin to the Yngwie school as filtered through the likes of Hammerfall, Rhapsody or Helloween).

Seriously, the song was pretty decent, but only really caught my attention when that solo section kicked in.

Holy shit, neoclassical Euro metal? And this from a vaguely melodeath lead line-driven verse, in a band (or at least members thereof) who used to be known more for their aggro tendencies?

Yeah, these guys keep getting better.

Really looking forward to the full length, if this is the direction they’re very obviously gravitating towards.

Every once in a while, a release drops across the virtual desk that yours truly was actually chomping at the bit for.

As a hardcore fan of both early Manilla Road and Chastain, the rumors that David T. and the late Mark Shelton were finally going to release some demos they’d done together around the time of Courts of Chaos was a jaw dropper…and something I couldn’t wait to dig my teeth into.

So here we are. Sadly, it’s only three songs worth of material (you know, an actual demo…), but with the longest and best track appearing in its abbreviated 12 minute (yep, you read that right) and extended 20 plus minute versions. Still more of a much welcome EP than an album, but who’s complaining?

Now, to the actual material herein. And that’s where I’m suddenly of two minds.

As you can probably tell from the opener, I absolutely love Chastain’s classic work. As discussed in an earlier writeup, it was the just released 7th of Never album (and specifically “feel his magic”) that was the final push that turned me from curious and interested to full blown metalhead back in the day.

There’s a lot of memories and attachments to that album, Ruler of the Wasteland which preceded it (an album my main rival/buddy guitarist back then (his band and mine were always in competition, not least for sharing the same drummer on occasion) loved, though oddly it was the only Chastain in his collection!) and to a lesser extent, those which followed: Voice of the Cult, Leather’s Shock Waves (whose title cut was cowritten by Shelton, in fact) and For Those Who Dare. Mystery of Illusion was a late favorite, but didn’t even know that one existed until it was reissued around 1990 or 91.

Manilla Road, I only discovered fairly recently, in my (re)discovery of the dusty, rather obscure corners of the US power metal world a year or two back…but damn, were they a find!

Admittedly, I never cared for Shelton’s thrash phase or that replacement singer who took over come the 90’s – however oddly nasal his vocals, they were part and parcel of what made those prime albums so special and outsider. I’m talking Crystal Logic and Mystification in particular, but Open the Gates and The Deluge are more than solid, and all four get very regular play (Courts of Chaos, occasionally, but just to hear “book of skelos” and the title track.)

So imagine: an old favorite shredder and bandleader/songwriter gets together with a new favorite guitarist/frontman (himself a bandleader/songwriter to boot). Should be awesome, right?

Well…yes and no.

Unfortunately, we only have four tracks to work with here, one being a repeat, albeit in a superior extended version. Plenty of flashy Chastain style leads and mysterioso Manilla Road riffs to be found in this (pair of) track(s) – and no question “orpheus descending” is the real draw here. It’s a killer track, and would have fit well on Courts of Chaos or even, raspier vocals aside, Mystification. I’m sold.

That said, “edge of sanity” is a brief, quite forgettably overaggressive thrash number (which bafflingly went reused by one of Chastain’s own projects of the era, apparently! Really? The most forgettable track? Why?, and “fields of sorrow”, while certainly an improvement thereon…just feels middling to inconsequential sandwiched between the 12 and 21 minute rounds of this…er, demo’s centerpiece and selling point.

A lot of folks are apologizing for the drum machine, but it’s really unnoticeable…and makes me wonder now if Fred Coury’s rather basic drumming on Mystery of Illusion was actually courtesy of a drum machine as well!

At a more standard price point, this one would definitely be worth it just for the extended “orpheus descending”, with “fields of sorrow” as an interesting, if overly thrashy appendix (the title track, again, baffles as to its being given such prominence and reworking – it’s by far the worst track on here, and not worthy of either man’s work).

At the $17 I’m seeing it list for across the board, though? Seems a bit steep for a two track demo, however excellent one of those tracks may be.

Now, back for another listen.

It is Chastain crossed with Manilla Road, after all.

FlowerLeaf – Stronger (November 9)

The quite attractive Vivian (“Vivs”) Takahashi is the centerpiece of this symphonic power metal duo, offering a pleasantly accented light soprano with just enough body to keep them from being another, say, Sarah Brightman.

There are a pair of femme guest vocalists here as well, and both women harmonize well with Takahashi on the tracks where they appear, though “we will stand” (with Exit Eden’s Marina La Torraca) comes off far more synergistic and dynamic than the stodgy if more faux-operatic “not my fault” (with a growly Mylena Monaco, of a band called Sinaya. Don’t ask me.) Of course, through the magic of multitracking, the lady harmonizes with herself well enough on the rest of the album. It’s all pretty pleasant on that front.

The issue is that the music itself is, while perfectly acceptable, totally generic chugging power metal guitars with only the sparsest of synth backing, and therefore highly unlikely to stand out in any real way from classic albums of the genre like Within Temptation’s Mother Earth, Visions of Atlantis’ Trinity, Magica’s Lightseeker or Krypteria’s Bloodangel’s Cry…never mind the likes of Nightwish, Leaves Eyes or the first two Epica albums.

Hell, even the Dianne Van Giersbergen albums with Xandria or the first few Ailyn Giminez Sirenia records are way beyond Flowerleaf’s reach, at least at this stage in their development.

And that’s a damn shame, because especially on tracks like “we will stand” or “girl in pearls”, Takahashi clearly displays the talent, range and pleasantness to really turn heads.

Bad? No…just snooze inducing and very, very common. You’ve heard stuff this basic so many times by now, you’ll be bored inside of a few bars.

So the fact that I’ll give ’em the nod despite that says a lot for Takahashi, who at least is pleasant and competent enough and bears the sort of endearing accent that made Ana Mladinovici’s Magica or Ana Stefanowicz’s Unsun so likeable…the sort of cute that just makes you want to give ’em a big ol’ hug. That was great, c’mere. Nice job.

Seriously. The girl’s got some talent, there.

Too bad about the meh material she’s given to work with.

Heretic Legion – The Purge (September 15)

New Swedish band copping to an old school death metal approach that feels somewhat Finnish, with a touch of the Dutch school. You know, as if you crossed Abhorrence with Gorefest, happens every day.

(long pause for dramatic effect)

whoops! Okay, what the fuck is this? There’s some aggro screamer that shows up about 2 minutes in to “walls of retribution” and throws the whole damn thing out of whack…

Kick him in the ass and shove him right out of the room. Slam the door, here’s your coat, here’s your hat, what’s your hurry? Oh, sorry, still have your coat and hat. Fuck it, burn ’em. You snooze, you lose(r)…

Seriously? He’s back again on the next track?

Sure enough, this glutton for punishment who wandered into a very wrong recording session by mistake sticks with ’em for every. single. track.

You know, you didn’t have to leave this asshole on the recording, guys. Just wipe that track, and point him to the whatever-core session 3 doors down, they’re sitting there wondering when the hell their screamer is going to show up.

Yeah, I don’t get this. The deep gargle growl vox are fitting enough (if a bit wet sounding and rather Finnish in feel), the simplistic, dark riffing that leaves them sounding so vintage Netherlands fits just fine…so why the pimply faced, hat to da back, baggy pants wearing, grab your dick to make sure you actually have one screamo/aggro/-core kid doing on this old school style death metal album?

The fact that both vox are done by the same guy just shows how wrongheaded someone involved with cough fronting this band actually is.

Dump the wannabe Anselmo bits, you’ve got a pretty decent sounding recreation of old school Euro-death metal on your hands.

Infernal Cult – All The Lights Faded (July 29)

One man bedroom black metal out of the Czech Republic.

Thankfully it’s more along the lines of the Cascadian school, expansive, pensive, essentially melodic in orientation and wide ranging in feel than you’d expect, particularly in tracks like “all the lights faded” or “distant from living”.

There’s a throbbing darkness to tracks like “embrace of shadows” or “triangle of horns” that suggests certain Norwegian acts (think mid to late 90’s, and more also ran than leading names here), with hints of the Finnish sound topping things off.

Then you get a track like “post living existence” which combines elements of the two for more of a depressive, Vardanesque sort of feel. None of the three approaches are less than likeable, none of this fails to work on several levels, and quite well at that.

Good stuff. I’m surprised to find a handful of black metal acts still worth hearing in recent months…particularly after a long and wide ranging apparent death of the genre, all wannabes and copycats and poseurs covering themselves in pseudos, atonality and more than just a little mumbo jumbo to throw everyone off the scent of the fact that they just plain suck.

There’s bits that lean ska, others that feel vaguely 80’s pop (amusingly, the grimly lyriced title cut!) and a general weirdness that keeps this Israeli duo from ever achieving classification as, say, a quirkier than usual Projekt darkwave act.

Is it listenable in a late 90’s Kim’s Video NYC sort of way? Oh, yeah, sure. This is the kind of thing the snotty hipster/punk reject clerks would try to scare off the listeners with all the time in their multiple Village to Alphabet City locations (there were four, if memory serves, the East Bleecker store and St. Mark’s being more or less tied as the best of ’em).

But is it goth? Not really.

Will it appeal to a general audience…even one inclined towards more cult and niche genre music? Nope.

But if you’re weird enough to dig stuff like The Residents and don’t mind hearing that general aesthetic transliterated to a second wave 90’s goth sort of milieu?

Yeah, they ain’t half bad.

Look, I can sit through and appreciate the occasional track from both Theatre of Hate and the Virgin Prunes, so this was nothing.

Hell, comparatively speaking? It was quite melodic and catchy!

Demetrio “Dimitry” Scopelliti – The Silent Watcher (November 4)

When did shred albums become unimpressive?

I mean, I can (and do) still sit through my old Shrapnel collection, shaking my head with appreciation at just how good some of these guys and gals actually were. Yngwie, Becker, Friedman, Chastain, Apocrypha, Racer X, Phantom Blue, Project MARS, Tony MacAlpine, even stuff like Eat ‘Em and Smile and Alcatrazz can still wow me with their impressive skills on the fretboard, as well as their darkly reverb suffused, very late night drive style metal compositions.

But these days, a few welcome surprises aside…so much of this is just…why? Why did you even bother to record this? Was anyone really impressed by this?

Case in point, we have some guy who does a bunch of awkward Dream Theater-style prog with more of a pissed off, detuned aggro guitar bent.* I guess if Joe Satriani were more of a grumpy neckbeard n’ tats type raised on aggro and nu metal, he’d put out something as yawn inducing and pointless as this.

* promo materials did mention crap like Devin Townsend – who at least has that weird sense of humor with the coffee-loving puppet – and Meshuggah, so you get the picture.

Me? I was bored off my ass, the more aimless transpositions and stutter riffs alternating between wheedly-whoo solos the guy laid down.

Yeah, whatever. So not impressed.

Next?

Madog – Raven (October 26)

oh, how clever! They’ve stolen the Warlord logo and inverted it. And that opening to “raven”…”child of the damned”, anyone?

Quirky vocals that suggest early 80’s “outsider” metal (think stuff like Manilla Road, Heavy Load or Brocas Helm, but with more of a light Hammerfall sort of feel to ’em) and riffs that feel so close to Warlord or Hammerfall (hmm…the Joachim Cans connection, perhaps?) as to invite the designation of “copycat wannabe”…and yet, for whatever it’s worth, they were kicking around since the very early 90’s (this is a long-delayed “comeback album”), so go figure.

Bottom line, if you’ve never heard Warlord or Hammerfall before, you may well enjoy this one as a light diversion between much better bands of their ilk.

But if you know either of those bands…you’d be better served giving their early albums another spin, and forget all about this cheap imitation, however unintentional of one it may be.

One Last Legacy – II (October 12)

You know…sometimes you can tell you’re in trouble right from the promo writeup.

Let’s just summarize and say that Five Finger Death Punch was prominently mentioned. As was Machine Head.

Well, it was recorded in the same studio Powerwolf uses, I guess that’s a plus? Oh, wait, Crematory uses the same studio, forget it…

Yeah, semi melodic choruses afflicted by thin, young sounding clean vocals crossed with Anselmolike aggro belch croaks and howls. More balladic moments are afflicted with the curse of corner of the mouth yowled grunge (at least vocally), the whole thing is depressive and “modern metal” with riffs that, even at their most active, barely feel metalcore…

…yeah, it’s a lot better and more listenable than FFDP ever could be (or Crematory, for that matter). No question, there.

I guess if they were more blackthrash, you’d expect and forgive the basic approach, particularly if you’re thinking “South American blackthrash”. Out of Portugal.

But as death metal? Too thrashy, not sinister or dark enough.

As thrash metal? Yeah, you can hear bits and pieces and a bit of vintage speed that mark it as such, particularly given the sociopolitical lyrics.

But it’s hardly the technical riff fest you’d expect from the genre, and while that’s not a deal breaker by any means, we’d be remiss not to put a flashing red light on this one.

Yep, it’s very listenable, and hardly a million miles off the mark – can’t say I didn’t like this one at all (because I kinda did, actually). But it ain’t quite right, either.

Buyer beware.

Open Surgery – After Birth Abortion (BVR Records) (December 17)

Whoa, wait a minute. Hold your cotton pickin’ horses, there, pal.

A quote from the promo materials: “an established Death Metal act who delivers solid Florida style Death Metal.”

umm…no.

Established? Yeah, right, if you consider 2014 “established”. Who are you trying to kid?

But seriously, who cares about a little hyperbole – how many places have you seen that claim “established in” some year about 50 years before they ever thought about opening a damn store or restaurant? People are full of shit, that’s just how it is.

But there’s a real gotcha in that sentence.

Ready for the zinger? “delivers Florida style death metal.”

Nope. Not even fucking close.

Hell, these Swedes can’t even get that “technical/brutal death metal” thing all the Suffocation wannabes are copping to right. How in hell is this supposed to sound like Death,Massacre, Morbid Angel, Obituary, Deicide, etc. etc.?

That’s right. It isn’t. It doesn’t. It’s kind of sorry, actually.

Well, they got one thing right, anyway. Because if there ever was an audio equivalent to an “after birth abortion”, this fucker’s it…

Yeah, it winds up as just a weirdly aggressive, overly busy for no good reason take on the standard “beauty and the beast” thing the genre is known for.

But as noted, the riffs outside the chorus and bridges are overly chugga-chugga tech death, and they have poor frontwoman “Juliette” (no last name given) go from her usual pleasantly full mezzo and clearly operatically trained high range to a painful sounding, tonsil ripping scream at least twice. Way to ruin those golden tones, lady…

And as you might well expect, the male death growls are as comical as ever, particularly when they kick the damn song off exchanging words within a given line of verse…hilarious juxtaposition between the utterly talentless (“Matt”, credited with “male vocals & growls”, all in caps) and the clearly too good for the band she’s saddled with (our pal “Juliette” again).

Now, look, they clearly know which side their bread is buttered on, and therefore stick far more closely to the usual gothic/symphonic sound than they do to the tropes of death metal. But it’s still enough to feel a bit awkward, and even evoke some laughs out loud from yours truly. Thanks, “Matt”!

All told, it’s just one single with two rather pointless instrumental acoustic and orchestral versions, so I am left curious to see how they handle a full length album.

Despite all this, some definite possibilities here, mostly down to “Juliette” (stop screaming, dammit! You need to preserve that golden throat!) and the band’s overall deference to the expectations of their (true) chosen genre (fuck the death affectations, which are simply pointless and distracting).

More positive elements than not, despite how it may come off here.

Piledriver – Rockwall (ROCKWALL Records) (October 12)

Bar band.

Seriously, that’s all I have to say, and you’ll get the whole picture.

To be nice and fill out the picture a little, they’re a blues rock/boogie band with a decidedly 70’s “classic rock” feel, and the band feels “lived in”, like they’ve been playing this sort of thing in boozers and rented halls for decades, bumming ciggies and blowing more on the bar tab than they earn in an evening.

Weird tidbit? Accept/U.D.O. alumnus Stefan Kaufmann is part of the band. Don’t ask me how you go from straightforward Teutonic metal to this.

I mean, did you hear the fucking vocal that opens “it’s time”? Oh, and look, now they’re all drugged out droning like some half assed Alice in Chains?

Come on, let’s flip to another track. This has to be a one off or something.

(head shaking in disbelief)

Seriously? They’re going to do this on every track? And what’s with that whispering thing (“the unknown soldier”)?

Overdramatic, overly bombastic keyboard/symphonic bits that only serve to enhance just how ridiculous and over the top this is, then those absurd vocals. Either approach, because you get both in just about every track…but moreso the aggro/death ones, which are just…oy.

The most listenable thing here…and it’s still pretty bizarre…is “the witches dance”, which sounds quite retro-90’s danceclub, all gothicized/grim electronica. I actually liked this track, brought back some memories. Very much of that period, nice job.

But the rest…I guess it’s like a far less likeable Fatum Aeturnum, where it’s so fucking strange and out of some crackhead’s fever dream that it may actually hold some bizarre appeal. “Here, check this out! You’ll never believe this one…”

Yeah, I have no words. I like that one song a lot, that’s all I can offer here.

OMEGAVORTEX – Promo 2018 (July 13)

uh, yeah. Black/death. All the atonality, ringing open string bullshit and bad shout/gargled vox you’d expect from that, with half-assed Morbid Angel swipes for the song titles.

Utterly pointless, they probably think they’ve crafted a work of genius here.

Generic to subpar stoner doom act. Apparently the guitarist is a veteran of much better, if rather noticeably industrial/dance acts like KMFDM and Ministry.

Yeah, the riffs are there, but it doesn’t feel right at all – things lumber along at an (overly) fast pace, but there’s no feeling behind it, and the vox are terrible, and ill suited to the genre in all their screaming and shouting throughout.

You have to wonder if our vet wanted to recreate the industrial sound in a more stoner style format, and failed both audiences’ fanbases in the attempt.

Give this one a wide berth. No buts about it, this doesn’t work in the least.

The Cascades – Phoenix (Echozone) (October 19)

Okay, these guys bill themselves as gothic rock…but they’re not.

More like goth expats, or something borderline like Concrete Blonde’s excellent Bloodletting…but ultimately not gothic rock at all, however related it may seem in the big picture.

“Fur F.” sounds like Iggy Pop fronting a more synthpoppy Moonspell, if you can even picture such a thing.

Other tracks feel too mainstream indie rock, like “avalanche” (which comes off much like Peter Murphy’s decidedly un-gothic solo career), or “blood is thicker than blonds”, which is like a far less gothicized take on The Mission.

“Dark daughter’s diary” comes much closer to the real deal, being somewhat reminiscent of “haunting” era Nosferatu, but then we’re out of range again, with the late period Fields of the Nephilim cowpunk meets The Cult psychedelia of “phase 4”.

And so it goes, with some tracks teetering closer to actual goth only to miss the mark, while subsequent tracks manage to fall somewhere just outside the genre (or to sound like genre expats in their more mainstream later work).

Even tracks like “this world is yours”, clearly intended as a Sisters of Mercy homage of sorts, doesn’t bear the necessary darkness, cavernous reverb or sinister nervous agitation that marks the genre from its very core.

Bottom line, they’re familiar with the bands and their subsequent careers, and are clearly trying hard to emulate and recreate the sound…but don’t understand what makes the genre work, haven’t touched, felt and been consumed by the green toned flame that burns at the heart and soul of its listeners and practicioners, when it’s real.

Not saying they’re poseurs, here – I leave that question to those who know them personally, if not posterity.

But I am saying that however well they apprehend the superficials, they don’t get the essentials. You know, what actually makes a goth a goth, what makes the music work the way it does and touches those deep, hidden places within, igniting the inner flame and drawing like unto like…swaying like a community of dark spirits, burning to cinders with a white hot pyre that must be experienced to be understood.

Now this felt more authentically gothic…at least in the sense of “gothic/industrial”. Check out the “heartlay remix” of the title cut or “close the window”, and tell me that don’t feel like something off 13 Above the Night, or perhaps a Spahn Ranch cut…

Hell, you could even say the “heartlay remix” of “she holds my will” crosses London After Midnight with Suspiria…and that’s as directly second wave gothic (albeit the segment that comes with industrial leanings) as you can get.

The only “gotcha” here is taht it’s the same 6 songs, with a few coming in multiple (as in up to 4 apiece!) mixes. Generally the “heartlay remixes” work best, with the “erotic end of times remixes” coming a distant second, and the “aura shred” and “THOT” ones feeling utterly pointless. Gee, we can tell which of the four is a goth, can’t we?

But overall? This could have a release date of 1996 stamped on it, and nobody’d bat an eye.

Hails to my dark brethren, it’s about time y’all came back out of the shadows for another round.

Ecthirion – Psalms of the Risen Dead (Soundmass) (December 7)

Another gothic/symphonic metal act, albeit one so pretentious as to self-identify as “orchestral metal” with death metal influences.

Well…yeah, there’s some pointless Nile-esque vibe to “march of the risen dead” and a definite prog/tech death riffing overly cluttering a few tracks, but it’s the ones where they stick closer to genre…or even go full on Enya (“home”) that actually work, so they’d do well to forget the death metal genre ever existed and just do what they do best.

It’s nothing to write home about – Flowerleaf features more pleasant and endearing vocals, Season of Tears more impressive ones.

All you can say about Ecthirion in the end is that it’s sorta listenable, and nice to see a husband and wife (or is that brother and sister?) cooperating in a band together, for however long that lasts.

Alexandra Zerner – Opus 1880 (September 23)

What was I saying about the state of ostensible shred albums nowadays?

I refer the reader to our earlier discussion of the curious case of Demetrio “Dimitry” Scopelliti, and point your attention to the fact that much of this rather lengthy effort is actually vocalled (mostly by an “Angel Wolf-Black”, whoever that is).

But again, it’s overly Dream Theater-proggy, all pointless stutter stopping and weird key changes with no apparent motivation, with songs that sound strangely soft, yet appear to go nowhere in the end.

Strangely, Zerner seldom takes center stage for the usual wheedly-whoo bits or at least seems reluctant to do so, burying her tone under guitar synth even when she does.

Again, like Scopoletti, she quite consciously evokes the likes of Joe Satriani and post-Zappa/Alcatrazz/Roth/Whitesnake Steve Vai (you know, when he stopped making music worth hearing) while appending far more to the Dream Theater school of John Tesh with legato playing, sweep picked runs and general snooze inducing flibberty-gibberty nonsense.

Someone, somewhere in the world is very impressed by this album as we speak.

I am not that person, and I doubt you will be either.

Unless, you know, you jack off to Dream Theater every night. In which case, have at it, I don’t wanna know.

Lutharo – Unleash the Beast (November 16)

Another Canadian power metal act crossing the Euro sound of modern iterations of the genre with the more thrash roots of the vintage USPM sound.

Much like their earlier countrymen 3 Inches of Blood, they bring good production, polished performances and powerful riffs to the table. But where the worst you could say about Blood was the oddly shrieky vox of Cam Pipes, Lutharo presupposes you’re a fan of The Agonist, if not modern day Arch Enemy.

Yep, frontwoman Krista Shipperbottom, despite like her obvious heroine possessing a perfectly acceptable clean alto (“temple”, the midsections of “unleash the beast” and “black scorpion”)…is yet another aggro screamo gone deep and “scary death metallish” in the Alyssa White-Gluz manner.

We saw the lady in question many years back, as a surprise opener for Epica and Visions of Atlantis (during their peak Melissa Ferlaak/Wolfgang Koch Trinity tour). And while she was undeniably cute visually…laughter and disbelief, if not outright derision was the only sane reaction. And then the band van broke down outside the venue…all that negative energy comes around, I guess.

The problem with both women is not that they can’t sing clean, and well at that. Because both can. It’s that they choose not to.

Nobody’s impressed by all this sub-Angela Gossow business, ladies. You’ll never sound as scary and manly as she does, and you really wouldn’t want to.

So bottom line? I liked the band, I liked when she sang clean. Those parts were actually quite good…

…which was exactly what I said about the first Agonist album, when she still sang about half the time. You know, just like Krista does here.

Who knows, maybe Arch Enemy will vacate the frontwoman chair, and this’ll be needed by someone…at least if anyone still cares or listens to Arch Enemy, even now!

Otherwise? Drop the BLUURRGH BOOOWWLL OHHHH bullshit and just sing like a human being. You’ve got the voice for it.

Well, at least all the words that were intelligible among all the screaming. Did we mention the weird off key warbling falsetto? How about the swallow the mic snottily nasal Jonathan Davis meets Layne Staley vocal approach when the guy’s not screaming and cursing up a storm to no apparent end?

(actual sigh of dismay ensues)

…look, I don’t have time for crap like this, and neither do you.

next?

Dust Prophet – “The Big Lie”

Okay, these New Hampshirites describe themselves as a “stoner/progressive/psychedelic rock band”, as if that made any sense to anyone whatsoever.

The riffs are overly busy and aggressive, if spastic, suggesting a heavy grunge orientation ala Alice in Chains or Soundgarden. Then at about 2 minutes 50 seconds, the distorted bass takes over and they go all Monster Magnet.

Combined with random keyboard riffs, overlaid multi guitar tracks and Heather Lynn’s “occult rock” ready alto vocals, nearly pushes this into All About Eve territory (particularly the early gothic rock leaning material, when they were still worth listening to – see also Cocteau Twins circa Garlands). The second half of the track comes off so much better than its rather awkward, even untoward first half.

Next time, lop off all that bullshit you were doing in the first 2 1/2 minutes of the track plus, and just deliver the dark psychedelia. Because that end of “the big lie” was a “big win” for you.

Dusk – Epoka

um…

okay, what we have here is a failure to communicate.

(long pause)

several tracks of aimless electronic noise-based “ambient” mixed together with a smaller proportion of noisy “industrial” material, with the usual overprocessed screaming and those seriously annoying Atari Teenage Riot high speed drum machine runs.

For the bulk of this album, nothing whatsoever actually happens, which is just…strange. Long builds that lead to nowhere, like taking one stairwell after another in an unfinished castle. Every presumed egress only leads to another stone wall, in effect.

And even when you do get the expected “industrial”, don’t sit there expecting, say, Ministry, or Skinny Puppy, or BiGod 20, or KMFDM, or Meat Beat Manifesto, or Rammstein, even. It’s pretty iffy, though admittedly more for those stupid drum machine patterns than the rest of it…

Instrumental doom, arguably stoner in tone and with some odd but not completely offputting electronic elements as background.

Most of what you’ll hear is those thick, droning guitars and pounding drums…just with this oddly swirling and buzzing electro/synth nonsense behind and above.

Apparently Sigh’s Mirai Kawashima did the intro and outro of the two track EP (which are the same exact piece repeated in two spots, a bit of a cheat, that…), and you can sort of tell it’s him by what you’re hearing. It’s the eerie stuff that actually sounds like it belongs, not the silly fritzing and fizzling stuff that stays throughout. A bit Sigh, a bit Necrophagia, but very obviously Kawashima.

Has too much going for it to dislike, but I could do without this “Microchip Terror” guy and his stupid sound effects, myself.

Aempyrean – Fireborn (Cyclopean Eye Productions) (December 1)

Poorly produced (such a thin sound! The hissing cymbals actually sound fuller and more lush than the guitars or the rest of the drumkit!) Indian deathtrash outfit.

They’ve clearly spent a lot of time listening to South American blackthrash (particularly Sarcofago) and Necrophobic, as that’s what comes across very loud and clear in their sound. They also cover Morbid Angel’s “chapel of ghouls”, but sound like Necrophobic with Mike Browning on vocals doing it, for whatever that’s worth.

Meh. Not bad in objective terms, just did nothing for me.

Dethgod – Disease Called Humans (October 25)

Wow. Not since Manilla Road have I encountered a drummer with a weirder sense of time and how to fill space than this…and at least Randy Foxe was just a weird timing sort of guy, like Mick Fleetwood or Ringo Starr.

This guy? He wouldn’t know meter if a metronome came to life and savagely bit him on the ass till he bled out.

I shit you not, this guy is that bad. Don’t believe me? Check out “created to conquer”, or even “ceremonial decadence” for starters. He needs to turn in his drummer card. Learn basic rhythm, guy!

Aside from that, they’re working Karl Willetts-style throaty death belches on the mic and overly detuned, Unleashed-thin and mids-heavy guitars that fall somewhere between lumbering chugging and overly fast tremelo with weird harmonic pick squeals, as if they were trying to be Suffocation and failed so miserably they wound up as Asphyx gone “brutal”.

Yeah, normally I’d be down with The Tribes (they’re Alberta Native Americans), but I think the Great Spirit may have turned his face from these guys…vox aside, they’re pretty weak.

Especially that damn drummer, holy shit! Did you scoop him up from Front Beast or something?

…next?

Siniestro – Arctic Blood (Black Lion Records) (December 10)

Swedish power trio who see themselves as blackthrash innovators (“we brought some punk to the table!”) Umm…yeah, sure.

Some tracks work well enough – the punchily riffed “arctic blood”, the odd punk meets groove of “pesten’s” second half – but it’s a decidedly middling affair, mostly marred by the mediocre death metal vox of some guy going by “Commander” (cough) and their overly blackened leanings which wind up screwing up every song of the four here at some point or another.

But there are also elements that make you wonder if they could do something better, as with at least portions of the two aforementioned tracks.

Forbidden Rites – Pantheon Arcanum (GrimmDistribution) (November 7)

Occasional melodic tremelo riffs in the vein of Gorgoroth enliven what is otherwise a fairly ho-hum affair.

I guess if you had to offer strong points about this, you could say the production is decent, at least if you removed the vocal track (those vocals aren’t just annoying, they’re mixed way too far up front, to the point where they all but bury the guitars and drums.

At times where “Vlad Marin” shuts the fuck up finally, guitars sound full and clear, with a nice tone for black metal, and drums are muted but work well alongside and behind them.

You could also say that the riffs were more deathlike and likeable than usual, but the real problem here? Those fucking vocals.

And again, if mixed to a proper level below the guitars (hell, put ’em behind the drums, too, works for me!), the vox are appropriate enough for the genre, if annoying, so it’s not like we’re talking something ridiculous like, say, Waxen here.

But when that’s the centerpiece and focus of the band? Yeah, I’d say we have a problem.

With never ending vocals, mixed up front and never stopping for even half a damn phrase burying every riff, and with drums that feel more power metallish than not (those bass drums never stop pounding away – thankfully not blastbeats, but are you excited by typewriter-style power metal drummers?)…yeah, this is pretty workaday if not downright boring.

Find a real engineer or producer to remix this thing, bury Marin as deeply as you possibly can and you may have a black metal-spectrum riff-fest on your hands.

Grinding, messy sounding death metal. Should appeal to the crowd that thinks Autopsy and Master are the sine qua non of the classic scene (when actually both were considered outliers, and marginalized if not completely ignored Stateside…)

Seriously, that’s all that need be said here. Take the grinding aggression and blurred, indistinguishable “riffs” of Master and tag in a lot of sloppy, overdistorted, almost Sunlight Studios sounding but far more akin to an Autopsian ethos guitar tone and noise-belch vox, and you know exactly what these guys sound like: almost retro death metal, but too pointless, sloppy, un-atmospheric (they just don’t sound sinister in the least…) and riff-less to actually qualify.

I guess if you’re desperate to fill another slot on the death metal shelf, they may pass muster, however by the skin of their collective teeth…but that’s about the best that can be said for ’em.

Lucifer’s Fall – Tales From The Crypt (Sun & Moon) (December 17)

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

Holy shit, Telly from the Sesame Street muppets gets his own band!

Seriously. The band themselves are sorta “occult rock”, sorta traditional/NWOBHM in riffing, but with a doomlike guitar tone and jam packed with the sort of solos and fills that’ll be sure to grab your attention. Good stuff, albeit a bit more in line with the USBM/biker band blackthrash Hell’s Headbangers seems to specialize in than
“doom” proper (in any of its variants)…

…but then you have to try, and fail miserably at, not bursting into involuntary gales of laughter at Telly’s overexcited gargle-shout vocals.

This appears to be a comp of some sort, with a few studio recordings, some rehearsal material and a few live tracks, which includes an awful take on Angel Witch’s…well, “angel witch”. It’s those vocals, man…and then he talks to the crowd, and sounds like a cross between John Lennon and Crocodile Dundee, which only makes it funnier.

Muppets yelling about satan or some shit, I tell ya…hilarious!

Where’s Oscar and Grover, I ask? I want these guys to cover the classic “I like trash”, or maybe even the unintentionally perverted “doin’ the pigeon”…

…next?

Svoid – Spiral Dance (Sun & Moon) (December 17)

Hungarian act that comes off like The Killers gone goth, or The Hives and Vines after discovering The Cure and Depeche Mode perhaps.

It’s all very polished and appealing, busy postpunk with strong gothic leanings that sounds decidedly modern indie rock, but with the sort of “almost there” feel of Unknown Pleasures-era Joy Division.*

* Hell, even the promo materials picked that up, asking “will you dance/dance/dance to this radio?”

Four tracks, but the only ones you’ll really want to hear are the stunning, oddly Devils Bloodlike “the velvet cell” (astute listeners will recognize that verse melody right away…) and, if you enjoyed that one as much as the rest of us did, perhaps “stand in awe” as well.

As for the other tracks, “the very hours” doesn’t feel very dark at all, and “long I’ve gone” is piano-based and uninteresting…so in the end, this is a very 50/50 proposition.

But when “the velvet cell” is as good as it is, and “stand in awe” isn’t exactly a million miles removed? I’m calling these guys one to watch.

WULKANAZ – S/T (Helter Skelter) (November 26)

Oddball, almost Bethlehem-esque blackened punk.

Now, to say someone’s combining black metal and punk is nothing new – hell, it’s part and parcel of the very roots of the genre, with Venom and early Bathory.

But when the end result is this bizarre and off kilter, short, generally atonal and sloppy as this? Yeah, this is some seriously strange shit.

Often blowing out the recording equipment like some ersatz variant of Guitar Wolf, this is just…not right, there’s no other way to put it.

At least the songs are appropriately short. Hell, even with most of them running around the 2 minute mark, they feel too damn long.

More death metal from Australia, and sadly of the “underground” variety, all cavernous incomprehensible vocals, massively detuned and heavily overdistorted guitars that shove the meters way the hell into the red zone. Only thing missing is the slap echo style mega-reverb…

End result is sorta like Incantation crossed with Suffocation, if you can even picture such an abomination.

Not the worst I’ve heard, by a long shot. But did nothing for me.

Ellende – Rückzug in die Innerlichkeit (AOP Records) (November 30)

As you can probably tell from the pastoral scene of lonely countryside on the cover, this is yet another band attempting to be Burzum, working that sort of slow, pensive and deliberate vibe you get with the Cascadian and (more listenable end of) DSBM, complete with shriek vox, haunting melodies and an overriding feeling of introspection and sorrow.

Ah, Blood Feast, the East Coast Slayer. Or so they used to call ’em. They always sounded more death metallish to me.

We had original Blood Feast drummer Kevin Kuzma on the podcast wayyyyy back, as one of the earliest metal interviews (alongside fellow New Renaissance act Dream Death and fellow thrashers Exumer and Whiplash).

That’s just the underground scene yours truly came up on, and at the time we contacted ’em, none of these guys had even hit the comeback trail (or had done so extremely recently – most were dropping advance singles or even making on-air surprise reunion announcements for our use at the time).

That said, it wasn’t long before Kuzma and the other remaining veterans (save guitarist Adam Tranquilli) began to drop off and leave the new recruits to take over the helm, to relatively promising results – we covered their eventual “debut” album The Future State of Wicked when it finally dropped early last year, and found it fairly worthy of the band’s brief but important late 80’s legacy.

Interestingly, the new EP seems to pull Blood Feast Mark III even closer to their vintage forbears than last go-’round, offering a more consistent, speedy, well produced yet raw feeling thrash attack that comes off like…well, an East Coast Slayer gone a bit death metal.

I guess the feel here is much akin to what we last heard circa Face Fate, with a fatter guitar and double bass tone, but complemented by raw, hissy cymbal action and a tinny punk snare…and Chris Natalini’s throat wrenching vocals, which are far less crazed than Gary Markovich’s were (big tipoff – you can actually understand the lyrics to their cover of “darkside”!), but arguably even more abrasive and nasty sounding. And I mean that in a good way.

But somewhere between the unexpectedly high energy yet decidedly vintage approach to thrash metal and the (much) improved production, you’ll notice just how killer some of these vintage riffs were…especially on their second cover, of Mark II’s “chopping block blues” (an album I’d never held in particularly high esteem, being too polished and…tame for my tastes. In fact, I always found it a tad boring, by Blood Feast standards…)

By contrast? The “new” Blood Feast’s version sounds very much of a piece to “darkside”. Better? So do the new tracks.

And in case you’re having any lingering doubts about how worthwhile it would be to check these guys out live, there’s even a surprisingly decent “live in Japan” bonus track on here.

6 songs, well worth your time.

Last time around, I gave ’em props more for continuing the legacy without pissing all over what came before. You know, hey, wasn’t sure what to expect here, but this really wasn’t bad at all – in fact, I kinda liked it. That sort of take.

This time? I think this one belongs right alongside Kill For Pleasure and Face Fate. Don’t even worry about the other stuff.

We’d covered the reissue of Fearless Undead Machines two years back, and addressed therein our mixed feelings about King Fowley’s long running Deceased.

I’m still waiting for that reissue of Luck of the Corpse, the album I first recall discovering them through, but these 2018 vintage ears have been far more kind to Deceased than they were back in the early 90’s (or around the millenium, when that Supernatural Addiction/Behind the Mourner’s Veil box dropped).

In other words…I have to say, I actually liked Ghostly White, which is far more of a straightforward traditional metal album, or even an arguable USPM outlier, than it ever tries to be a death metal one (which was the main issue with the band in the early days. “Wait…wha? This ain’t death metal!”)

Fowley is still horror movie obsessed (Mrs. Allardyce is about the weird Oliver Reed/Dan Curtis TV movie Burnt Offerings, for example) and still works those odd growling yet declamatory and almost Carnivore-like vocals, but time may have given him more gravitas and grit than I recall of earlier Deceased.

Ah, Morbosidad, the real life Spinal Tap. First drummer exploded (not kidding), next drummer fell several stories to his death…tragic but bizarre. Who wants to sign up for the drum stool next? Any takers?

So here they are, four years on from their Tortura and only a few months on from Corona de Epidimia and already they’re back at it, cutting two more tracks of hyperaggressive South American-style blackthrash. Same as it ever was, same as it…ever was.

Sweden’s Kill doesn’t fare half so well, with their poorly recorded 7 minutes of mush, despite a far more sinister vibe set mainly by their vocalist. Who knows, maybe better production would give them more of a fighting chance.

Morobosidad wins, for whatever that’s worth. You’ll probably see these two tracks again, someday on some comp of splits or what have you. Always happens…

Here, they up their game a bit by tagging in some decidedly Deathlike early “Evil Chuck” style vocals, then giving ’em the Carcass “dual vocal/shriek and deep growl” treatment. Nothing spectacular, but certainly likeable enough.

We’d also covered fellow Frenchmen Cadaveric Fumes for their Dimensions Obscure, but weren’t half so impressed, given all their blackened tendencies on display therein.

Here they fare much better, at least managing to sound authentically death metal on their two tracks, despite an overly raw (if still Sunlight-oriented) production style and wet sounding vomit vox.

Not a bad split for the type. Won’t shatter any records or do much more than send you back to spin the original bands and albums they’re swiping from here…but there’s something to be said for that.

You know, from that cover and song titles, I was really, really expecting something akin to Judas Iscariot, here.

Nope.

Overly dry, mids-heavy production, awful scream/shout vox, and a lot of trad metal/NWOBHM riffing. So how is this black metal, or even blackthrash, again?

Well, to be fair, you could trace a fairly indistinct line to Desaster from a lot of what I’m hearing here on the guitar side…but still. It’s more like an overly busy, too sloppy NWOBHM tribute with a seriously shit guitar tone.

Not sure what their intention was, but color me extremely disappointed.

Best track by a mile: “behold those distant skies”. Now take a listen to that track. Oh, how blackened, right?

At their best, Ysengrin is notable for a somewhat Rotting Christlike attention to trad metal melodicism amidst all the blackened nonsense, but here that’s nowhere in sight.

Instead, one track is entirely ambient, with spoken word/chanting, while the other is lumbering and so basic as to be pointless…why did they even bother to commit this to vinyl?

Australia’s Stargazer fares little better, with an overly repetitive riff that after about 6 minutes disappears in favor of aimless acoustic strumming and fiddling about.

umm…yeah. I think we’ve all got better things to do with our time, you as bands, the recording engineers and producers, the label, the listeners…to be wasting time on pointless experimental shit like this.

Speaking of pointless experimental nonsense, here comes the mainman of Acherontas with an utterly pointless ambient track and another that only occasionally erupts into even the most basic of riffing and drumming, with long, long nigh-silences between. It only gets acceptable around the 12 minute mark. In a 15 minute track.

Devathorn tries the same trick on one track, using Tibetan throat singing as filler before finally doing…something, at least; the other track is boring black/death of the most template variety (“I wannabe Watain. I really WANNA be Watain.”)

zzzz…

Right to the flames. So much iffy material this month, ya get tired of consigning everything to the oblivion they so deserve…but some are “special” enough to get the full monte.

WHIZZZ!!!

oof! Sorry about that. Someone just got their eyebrows singed clean off from that stinker…

…next?

Valkyrja – Throne Ablaze (W.T.C. Productions) (November 26)

We covered The Antagonists Fire a good five years back, and had a good laugh about their template Watain zombie/wannabe status.

Well, guess what? They haven’t changed a bit!

WHIZZZ!!!!

Holy shit! That was an explosion to reckon with…

Good thing we’re near the end of the Roundup. I keep expecting the cops to show up or something, the flames are just getting way too high this month!

Adaestuo – Krew Za Krew (W.T.C. Productions) (December 11)

We covered their Tacent Semitae a few years back, only to find ourselves calling for the check, practically before we sat down. Now that was unusually (A)brupt…

and…yeah. Let’s just say that Abruptum had nothing on these guys when it came to pointlessness.

If you spit out your first bite of rancid food, is it considered a “dine n’ dash”? Because I’m hardly inclined to stick around after this stinker.

Send this back to the chef, tell him to stick it in the incinerator, with my compliments.

Now back to the Brainstorm back catalogue. I need something that’s
actually good to wash my ears out after all this…

The Raven (1935, Lew Landers) is the more forgotten and “sleeper”-esque of the two, but may in many ways be the more perverse and wonderful.

Bela Lugosi (still just outside his “making women swoon” theatrical idol days, well before he became something of a one note joke) is the renowned surgeon who is “the only man” who can keep the attractive Irene Ware from being paralyzed for life after a car accident.

At first, he demurs, having retired to indulge his obsession for Poe among the likeminded in his gorgeous hillside manse, but when his professional pride is stroked (by fellows he deems competent enough to do the job deferring the work to him, and him only), he performs the operation.

While recuperating, Ware slinks around the place like she owns it, clearly comfortable with his skills with the organ (ahem) and dark European demeanor. Hell, she goes so far as calling him “almost a god” (!) Clearly, Lugosi’s found his perfect match.

Despite this, she ultimately (if hesitantly) decides to leave because she “has a fiancee” (the rather fey and disinterested Lester Matthews, one of the worst and most unconvincing “romantic leads” ever cast)…only to immediately turn around and stage a dance recital in Lugosi’s honor, based on Poe’s “the raven”. Yeah, sure, she has a fiancee. Gotcha. Nudge, wink.

So here’s where things go wrong. Her grumpy old judge of a father (Samuel S. Hinds) reads the very obvious writing on the wall, and steps in, all pompous disapproval and bourgeoise “morality” in action. “You disapprove yourself! You don’t want a young wife!” Sure, keep telling yourself that, old man…

As the very thought of Ware “torments (Lugosi) night and day!”, this drives the reclusive doctor over the edge, particularly when fate throws a curveball his way. And here’s why the picture is less remembered.

Because from this highly Decadent pre-code character piece, the king of mordant pathos, Boris Karloff enters the picture as an escaped sadistic convict who wants some plastic surgery to keep the law off his tail.

On the surface, sounds great, right? Karloff! Lugosi! Together in yet another of several pictures…some of which work (The Black Cat), most of which…don’t.

The problem, though, is less Lugosi, whose thick Hungarian accent and turn of the century theatrical training locked him into an increasingly typecast, increasingly marginalized trail of genre pictures, than the much feted Karloff, who despite having more range as an actor tended, at least at this point in his career, to be similarly typecast in the Frankenstein mold – one bit of “sympathetic monster/baddie” after another.

It’s even more cloying and obnoxiously obvious than binge watching a season of the Mod Squad. Enough, already, no more sympathy! Just be sinister, goddamn it!

So Karloff is made “even uglier” by Lugosi after the former suggests that “maybe being ugly makes a man do ugly things.” He invites Hinds, Ware and Matthews (plus a few random guests) to a dinner party, with the intention of introducing his enemies to his personally constructed, Poe-inspired torture devices.

Karloff, who was shown sympathy by Ware in a brief scene immediately prior, takes the opportunity to turn on his doctor/betrayer, everyone else lives happily ever after. Forgettable fluff, in the end, and why even yours truly only remembered it in part, if fondly, as a decent Lugosi B-picture.

But think about what could have been, were the entire Karloff third of the film excised. Even had (as you might expect from films of this period) Lugosi’s plans for revenge been duly foiled, his mutual (if on his end, admittedly more obsessive) attraction to Ware* gone unfulfilled…

Why, then, the Raven could have fulfilled the promise set by its first third, as a surprisingly Decadent ode to alternative culture, of love among the gothic and those who prefer to exist outside the “mom and apple pie” ostensible “mainstream” of Middle America, the Hallmark channel and Celebration USA.

In other words, all of us misfits who have the balls to think for ourselves and live as we choose, in a world that actively frowns upon and dissuades us from such.

* just to make things more “safe” for the moral minority in attendance, Lugosi is shown not only with a full on “mad scene”, but dropping his passion for Ware entirely, in favor of “liking to torture” and sticking both Matthews and Ware in a crusher “to share their love together”. It’s an obvious cop out and indefensible volte-face from everything the film offered visually and in the script and dialogue prior, clearly imposed by a nervous studio magnate of some level.

On the flipside (or actually, the same side of the DVD), we have the prior year’s The Black Cat (1934, Edgar G. Ulmer), which is a clear upgrade in visual quality and gravitas (no surprise, given Ulmer’s background in German Expressionism).

This one feels like a European-lensed silent film, with all the use of light and shadow, wild, jagged, futuristic sets and visual stylization as just as important a part of the end product as the acting or script. It’s dark, Decadent…and even blatantly satanic in the old, more theatrically inclined sense of LaVey, but we’ll get to that.

This time around, early horror regular David Manners (who never failed to relate just how much he detested the genre in interviews thereafter) and his rather meh bride Julie Bishop are newlyweds taking a honeymoon to some undisclosed central European locale.

Through a twist of fate (or just plain red tape), they wind up sharing their train ride with Bela Lugosi, who then winds up bringing them along to his intended destination after the bus they get off to travel on is wrecked in a weather related accident.

The destination? His old “friend” Boris Karloff’s (here in by far the greatest and most successful of their pairings) place: an eerie futurist castle built on “the biggest gravesite of the (First World) War”.

For the remainder of the film, Manners and Bishop attempt to be polite while figuring their way out of the situation, a dark, allusive metaphorical game of chess (which eventually becomes literal, ala the much later Seventh Seal) between Lugosi and Karloff – the former a revenge minded escapee from an “inescapable” gulag after 16 years, after being betrayed by his former compatriot.

While both men have quite obviously become a bit mad over the years, Lugosi plays one of his rare heroic roles here, as the “good guy” and “one of Hungary’s greatest psychiatrists” (oddly, an ailurophobe, which is where the film’s title derives from) who wants the couple to leave safely and find his wife (taken as a prize of victory from Lugosi by his betrayer, and literally preserved like a taxidermist and put on display behind glass (!).

Karloff (“one of the world’s great architects!”) holds many dark surprises, however – he’s also taken Lugosi’s daughter (Lucille Lund) to bed, as what appears to be a hypnotized (or at least well “groomed”) sex slave…and then kills her before Lugosi can liberate her.

He’s also the head of a blatantly satanic cult (he even sports an inverted pentagram at certain points and offers an atavistic “wolf in man” prayer in Latin – surprisingly open for this era of cinema!), who plans to use Bishop as the altar cum sacrifice when the time is propitious.

No pathos-baiting bullshit here, that’s for damn sure…this is Karloff at his all too rarely seen best, all sinister maneuvering and cocky self-assuredness at his own mastery of a deadly game he’s only too willing to play.

Eventually, Lugosi and his manservant (who has been working as Karloff’s as a sleeper agent) take down Karloff, with Lugosi enacting a gruesome torture on his tormentor and betrayer and sending everyone save the newlyweds to a well deserved oblivion in the final scenes. Wow.

As noted, this is immediately evident as a top tier directorial effort, with far more care and attention put into every frame, each set, each shadow, each archly delivered line of dialogue (deliberately kept sparse throughout, limited to only the most important bits of information) than your average horror picture, even of this early, more silent Expressionist-influenced era.

In fact, the stagey (if highly watchable) Dracula aside, I’d venture to call this the greatest of all classic horror films of its era, and one of its most Decadent and daring at that. Only the aptly-paired The Raven, for all its failings and more straightforward nigh-soapiness, even comes close in that respect.

Needless to say, both pictures come highly recommended, albeit for different reasons and on two very different levels.

]]>https://thirdeyecinema.wordpress.com/2018/11/17/classic-film-review-the-raven-and-the-black-cat-lugosi-karloff/feed/0thirdeyecinemaAnd now, a belated addendum…https://thirdeyecinema.wordpress.com/2018/10/26/and-now-a-belated-addendum/
https://thirdeyecinema.wordpress.com/2018/10/26/and-now-a-belated-addendum/#respondFri, 26 Oct 2018 19:30:12 +0000http://thirdeyecinema.wordpress.com/?p=28230Continue reading →]]>Through the vagaries of social media and the multifarious, oft convoluted pathways of modern day relations, actually had a chat with the frontman of Runescarred, whose cover of an Iron Maiden track I didn’t even know existed we…really had no comment on, given the complete lack of reference point.

In other words, it would help if the original version were familiar, to contrast the covering act’s own take thereon…or a fuller album or EP to judge the band on its own merits. And of course, comments to this effect were made, with the implication that we’ll see how it goes when we hear more from these guys. Fairly typical response when you’re thrown in the deep end of the pool like that.

Well, guess what. I was indeed provided with the band’s recent EP (which to a mutual raise of the eyebrow, hadn’t made its way across the virtual desk to date*), not even for review, but just as a gesture between fellows. Here, so you have a point of reference, hope you get a kick out of it, no strings, end of story.

* well, as it turns out…ah, never mind.

But you know me (or should by now, if you’re a Third Eye regular). I’m nothing if not honest to the point of bluntness…and while that can play against subpar materials (or bands with members who really aren’t pulling their weight, like the sadly ubiquitous scream n’ growl ’cause I sure can’t fucking sing vocalist, a veritable mountain’s worth of “metal” spectrum frontmen implicated thereby)…it can also work for a band, when they can actually play, sing, have good songcraft and/or production…or just simply succeed at crafting material true to its source and intent.

And so, ladies and gentlemen, I come before you offering a well deserved nod of respect to…Runescarred.

These former members of Dead Earth Politics (together with members of local good ol’ boys Southern Front) seem to have er…progressed beyond the somewhat proggy thrash/groove thing Dead Earth Poltics was known for, with vocalist Ven Scott almost entirely eschewing the sub-Anselmoisms* for more of a Euro power metallish rasp, only rarely delving into the ooga booga scary monster death/metalcore thing for effect.

It’s not quite Mob Rules or Brainstorm, but not even as abrasive as what Ralf Scheepers is doing with Primal Fear…and this from a Texan band with aggro leanings?

* closest I’m hearing to the Pantera/Exhorder thing comes on closer “ghost ocean”…but even there, it’s not as obnoxious and in your face as usual.

Furthermore, the prog elements appear to have increased dramatically. Granted, DeP tracks like the one from which they derive their moniker were moving more towards this direction…but were fans of that earlier act really expecting something like “this is mine”?

In point of fact, the first reference point that hit me in hearing this three track EP? Was Helion Prime.

I think that says there’s been a definite…er, progression here.

The guitar work is busy, but never at the expense of melody or harmonic structure, the drumming is more than competent (and speaks more to European power metal than any more domestic genres), production is quite solid and the whole affair comes off as a progressive power metal act with light thrash tendencies, rather than a thrash/groove thing starting to lean a bit prog.

Yeah, I’d call that a change, alright. And a very welcome one at that.

For example. There’s a situation going down for a few years now that’s been intermittently quite serious, involving relatives, splits and all sorts of issues that are really none of anyone’s fucking business…so nuff said on that.

But the reason I bring this up is to illustrate a point – namely, that every time we think “problem solved, time to rest”, there’s another huge caveat, a major “gotcha” that almost implies we’d have been better off leaving things as they were and not even trying to help or get involved (when there was really no option to do otherwise, just as a pair of fellow human beings, much less relatives). The situation just keeps getting worse, for every apparent victory.

It’s disheartening, and giving everyone (except those at the center of the issue, who could care less about anyone but their respective selves…) literal grey hairs…and more fights, agita and general discomfort than these assholes have any merit to.

So here we are, on the cusp of a midterm election, Stateside, and it already looks like the greater evil is hacking, conniving, getting enormous injections of cash from sinister magnates and corporate types (never mind the infamous “dark money”, this is out in the open!), utilizing a decade plus worth of gerrymandering and redistricting in their unwarranted favor (as their actual numbers in support are ridiculously lower than those who oppose) and disenfranchising and disallowing entire tens of thousands of obvious opposition voting blocs.

Seriously? And we have dim bulb red cap donning Uncle Tom types supporting these modern day Simon LeGrees?

Good GOD, people are dumb.

Let’s just hope there’s enough of an activated resistance…and enough leeway to beat all these Boss Hogg-style dirty tricks, to “drain the swamp” of all the slugs and leeches put into place under the hilariously contrarian co-opting of that very phrase (“let’s put an end to wrongdoing, hatred and evil!,” said Satan…) and clear a certain party en toto from the corridors of power.

I, for one, have serious doubts…but we live in hope, even in this darkest of hours.

But on the plus side, I’ve been digging into all sorts of previously reviewed (and previously unheard back catalogues) Euro-style power metal, to often amusing result (yeah, sure, I’m really enjoying stuff like Hammerfall, Sonata Arctica and Alestorm again, and falling for Mandrake/Hellfire Club-era Edguy was probably inevitable.

But who’d have expected a new appreciation of…wait for it…Powerwolf? Yeah, knock me over with a feather. What’s next, Sabaton?

There’s also been some surprises in re-evaluation. You’ll see one in the reviews below relating to Dynazty…and the latest was hearing a band only yesterday, and thinking “damn, this sounds so much like Battle Beast. They should probably sue…”

Yep, that was the actual words out of my mouth, to the wife. Want to know who it was? Burning Point. You know, the band Nitte Valo fronts post-Steel? Insert hearty laugh here…

So for those curious…the self titled (her debut with the band) sounds so much like Steel (arguably with elements of Battle Beast’s own self titled), you’d never believe it. Belated huge thumbs up on that one. Sadly, followup The Blaze doesn’t hold up half so well, being a rather gloomy and dispirited affair* (probably more akin with more recent Battle Beast, who similarly appear to have jumped the shark…suffice to say, the self titled is the last one in the personal collection!)

* except for that inspired choice of cover. Would never have associated Lee Aaron with Nitte, but turned out to be an ideal pairing for her range and tonality.

But that self titled? Fucking killer, and you can go back and append the last paragraph to the original review thereof. Oh, and same goes for Nightmare’s new femme-fronted iteration, with Dead Sun (interestingly, reviewed during the same month). Hardly disliked either at the time…but in reevaluation, their stock has gone up, so to speak.

And then there’s the curious case of Helion Prime, who seem to be at something of a loss without the pleasant pipes of Heather Michele Smith…or some manner of frontwoman working the mic…

Yeah, a lot of that sort of thing going on.

So enough about the increasingly distasteful world around us, or the ever-amusing personal journey of a music aficionado cum critic…more to be enjoyed scattered throughout the many reviews that follow.

Allow me to extend a crooked arm, for you to latch onto as we sally forth together.

Shall we, then?

IMPELLITTERI – The Nature of the Beast(Frontiers Music s.r.l.) (October 12)

Damn!

It’s no secret that I’ve been (and still am) something of a shred-head…and that I have a strong appreciation for the work of Graham Bonnett, particularly in his earlier days.

I mean, the guy worked with Yngwie (like Ron Keel and Mark Boals, both of whom have been on the podcast to talk their work with him as well, Michael Schenker, Ritchie Blackmore, Steve Vai, Japan’s Anthem (on what may be their strongest album outside Tightrope and Gypsy Ways)…and Chris Impelliteri. Twice.

But even apart from Bonnett, Impelliteri has dropped album after album of quality material, even with the oddly entertaining anime theme song meets classic metal riff project Animetal USA…but most often with (of all frontmen!) Christian rocker (and erstwhile Angelica/Project M.A.R.S. frontman) Rob Rock.

From the very first Impelliteri EP to now, excepting the two Bonnett albums (yep, there were two, where have you been?) Rock has delivered his powerful yet melodic Michael Sweet with balls tones to every single release, offering a perfect one two punch of class and grit to the man’s compositions that’s fairly irresistible.

And then, of course, you have Impelliteri’s own impressive shredding skills, committed to video on classic REH instructional VHS Speed Soloing. Say what you will about how closely Stand In Line appends to No Parole for Rock N Roll (and yeah, there are some really strong parallels, probably more down to Bonnett than Impelliteri himself…which you’d know if you followed the rest of his (for many years, Japanese-only) albums and career!), but the man can fucking play.

I had Chris Impelliteri on the show a few years back to discuss all of these matters and more, and whether you buy some of his demurring on certain matters or no, the guy was quite affable and gave a good career spanning interview (as always with the Third Eye podcast, it’s what we do), so I think at this point, we can say that I’m probably not going to slam an Impelliteri album without damn good reason…and before you brace yourself for a huge slam, just calm your ass down, because there’s less of one here than ever.

The production, while still pushing guitars right up front alongside the vocals and perhaps overemphasizing bass tones (when’s the last time you heard that?), is strong and clear, and both Rock and Impelliteri sound as strong as ever…perhaps, in the latter case, better than in recent albums like Wicked Maiden, or (this one’s a bit trickier) Venom.

Seriously – all the loose ends and untoward bits that infected albums like Crunch (overaggressive and slightly groove oriented) or Wicked Maiden are absent, the guitars are no longer buried in the mix or thin toned (as in earlier albums like Stand in Line or the EP) and there are simply no throwaway songs (like in Eye of the Hurricane, Answer to the Master or System X).

I’m not sure what to think of the unusual Sabbath cover “symptom of the universe”, but he clearly pulls it into a very different direction around the solo section, and yes, “do you think I’m mad” is a lot weaker than the 10 originals that surround it…but even with those two taken into account, this is some seriously solid shit.

Better: Impelliteri comes off like a man with something to prove, blazing away with articulation and speed, building riffs off memorable, catchy and aggressive licks like you haven’t even heard from Yngwie since he went all soft around Odyssey. This guy came to chew bubblegum and kick ass, and he’s definitely all out of bubblegum.

So yeah, I have a lot more respect for the work of Impelliteri (the musician and the band) than a lot of folks I’ve talked to…but that’s down to them, and a likely lack of exposure to anything post-Stand in Line and pre-Frontiers (if that.)

But even walking into this and approaching it like Joe Blow and the New Kids – The Debut, you can’t help but be smacked right across the teeth by the sheer intensity, quality and yes, improvement over what’s come before, even one album back.

Do you need to sit around and think about it?

Get the fuck up off your fat ass and get this one, already!

…yeah, I know, Rob Rock is covering his ears and praying for my immortal soul right now, whatever. You heard me. You know what to do.

NAZARETH – Tattooed On My Brain (Frontiers Music s.r.l.) (October 12)

Southern rock style “classic rock” band from back in the day, oddly hailing from…er, Scotland (!)

Well, the Bay City Rollers they’re not…this is typical beefy riffed 70’s rock in the vein of Molly Hatchet and Marshall Tucker, but with the vocal/scream approach of Marc Storace and Krokus.

For a band of their vintage (when the hell was “hair of the dog”, anyway, 1981?), they sound surprisingly aggressive and if not “technical”, then certainly “riff and lead-heavy”. Check out the “thunderstruck” style schtick that “state of emergency” is built around, or even “don’t throw your love away”, and tell me these are guys that old…

Of course, there’s a lot of bluesy slide riffing (hardly talking Moody/Mardsen-era Whitesnake, here, but even so…) and even a new wave track (“tattooed on my brain”) to betray their vintage, but who ever complained about that, particularly nowadays, with all the retro-everything going on in music of all stripe?

What I took away from Tattooed on my Brain (the album, not the song) was less the sort of grizzled bar band “classic rock” thing I was expecting, and more of a Krokus gone slide guitar blues-rock.

While far from metal in any respect (so don’t walk in expecting another Headhunter here), it was a lot heavier and dare I say, more youthful sounding than 99% of that particular genre…which if symptomatic of their earlier work, may be why they’ve toiled in relative obscurity, at least Stateside. “Too busy, aggressive and youthful sounding for old drunken plumbers!”, there’s a new tagline for Nazareth…

If you’re looking for something different that falls somewhere between the aforementioned bands and styles, or just a longtime Nazareth fan curious about what they’re up to after all this time…dig right in, you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Because that’s what you get here, some unholy cross between that forgotten biker trash/psychedelic/neo-grunge act and the similarly minded (but even sleazier) Circus O’ Power.

Hey, I knew folks who were diehard glamsters that turned to this shit overnight back around ’88 or ’89. Didn’t understand it then…like straight edge scene leader Pat Dubar moving on from Unity and Uniform Choice to…Mind Funk.

Yeah, it was a fucking lame time, right there at the end of the 80’s, unless you were deep into the thrash (and as it turned out in very short order, what birthed into death and black) metal underground like yours truly…

Best I can offer is “buzzed out city” sounds very much like something off Blow Up Your Video, for all you Johnson-era AC/DC fans out there.

mmm. I have nothing else to say here.

You already know if you’ll think this one’s the greatest thing since sliced bread, or if you’ll hate it with a fucking vengeance.

SEVENTH WONDER – Tiara (Frontiers Music s.r.l.) (October 12)

Really syrupy prog metal…so it’s no surprise, given the chosen superlative, that they hail from Sweden.

Hey, look. We gave a bit of a knock to Dynazty the other month for their sugary light tone…then it turned into a sleeper hit (yep, that and Brainstorm’s latest have been getting more than the usual share of airplay around our house over the past few weeks…of course, so has (of all bands!) Powerwolf, if you can’t tell from some of the references this month…so take as you will.)

But I’m not sure this is another Dynazty. It’s too much of the Dream Theater school of prog to really sink in, too Euro style and without the quirkiness of even a Helion Prime to mark towards its merit.

Now, don’t get the wrong impression here – this is a reasonably subjective take thus far. Objectively speaking, they’re quite polished (as you’d expect of bands playing in this style, particularly when given half a budget for production and a European provenance to grant a bit less aggro and more than a touch more class than far too many bands Stateside). They tick off many of the expected boxes…

…but honestly. Since when is a comparison to fucking Dream Theater considered a positive here at Third Eye?

That’s right. Never.

So pluses? Decent production, lots of polish, pleasant vocals, solos that are a bit less wheedly-whoo than usual for the type.

Minuses…too soft, too Petrucci/Myung-style prog…and as the latter implies, nowhere near enough catchy melodies, hooks or riffs (ever try sitting through one of their endless John Tesh gone techie snoozefests?)

Fans of this style and approach may shake their heads and praise this one to high heaven.

But you can say that about the gnarliest, most tuneless and derivative corners of the black metal world as well, what the fuck does that mean?

Bottom line, while I can give a nod of respect for the polish and performances, when it comes down to brass tacks, this did nothing for me whatsoever.

Period, end of story.

CREYE – S/T (Frontiers Music s.r.l.) (October 12)

Now here’s a guy who accomplished his goal.

Apparently guitarist and mainman Andreas Gullstrand had a “vision to start a Swedish pop/rock sensation (reminiscent of) the eighties.”

Well…yeah, that’s exactly what this is. End of teen comedy/action film feel good credits roll theme songs wall to wall, music for mallrats driving the streets in convertibles on their way to another house party, dayglo outfits with hoop earrings and big hair, the whole deal.

Seriously, if I played this to a few peers not so connected to the world of music (at least the kind we cover here at Third Eye, I’m sure they hear some top 40 shit or whatever), I’m sure I could convince them with very little effort that this was another Survivor/Foreigner/Autograph/Asia style band they’ve somehow managed to overlook for all these years.

It’s light AOR radio rock, make no mistake…but hell if it’s not dead on.

And damn, it’s good!

Now where’s my collection of Michael Dudikoff movies? I’m suddenly inspired to check out a classic training montage or something…

If you’re of a certain age, even if you were one of those (cough like yours truly cough) who went a whole hell of a lot heavier and more “underground” into the thrash scene (and the very nascence of still-nonexistent genres like death, black, US power and doom metal, all still covered under the surprisingly broad umbrella of “thrash” or “speed”)…you came up on this stuff.

Seriously, stop posing. And this coming from a guy who used to scare the living shit out of “poseurs” just for laughs, Baloff style…because we all still listened to bands like Motley Crue, Twisted Sister, Ratt, Dokken and Quiet Riot too. Hell, even Poison’s first album had some irresistible cuts (and someone very near to your ear right now can be heard throwing down the riff to “talk dirty to me” on an old rehearsal/jam session, right in the middle of all that heavy shit.* It’s all good.)

* and come on, how many times have we shared laughs about my drummer’s fixation on what he termed “dirtbag metal” (Hollywood glam and GNR style tattooed sleaze rockers)? Can’t help but dig some of it, with regular exposure…

So here comes a band out of Sweden, who we’ve actually covered several times previously, for their self titled, concert album Sound of the Live Minority and Ruff Justice, all to some pretty positive reviews. About the worst that could be said is that selling themselves as “sleaze rockers” was a bit of a misnomer – we’re hardly talking L.A. Guns and Cats N’ Boots here, much less Dirty Looks or Spread Eagle!

But that’s also Crazy Lixx’ greatest strength – that they’re actually more from the AOR-leaning mid to late 80’s glam/mainstream metal scene occupied by bands like Black N’ Blue, Cinderella, Giuffria, Roxy Blue, Autograph and especially Def Leppard: all big singalong choruses, wall to wall hooks, polished production and a playing style that’s clearly competent and assured without ever getting flashy enough to distract from the catchy melodies.

Well, OK, they could have benefited from a little of that – every Dokken had a George Lynch, every Ratt had a Warren DiMartini. Even Winger had a secret weapon in Reb Beach…Crazy Lixx clearly missed that boat.

But even so – I dare you to find a weak track on their debut album Loud Minority, here re-released alongside their second and third albums, New Religion and Riot Avenue respectively. All come in expanded editions with bonus tracks: Loud Minority mostly filled with earlier demo and promo versions of tracks better represented on the album itself, New Religion with an otherwise unrepresented track (“lights out!”) and Riot Avenue with…well, two pretty much worthless acoustic versions of tracks off the same album.

That said, if you’re asking me, stick with the nearly flawless debut Loud Minority, which is absolutely killer.

Followup New Religion brings a second guitarist onboard, but waters down both production and style in the process, much akin to judging the Def Leppard of High N’ Dry (a killer album that still holds up from end to end), then jumping straight ahead to Hysteria. Like…what the fuck just happened here?!?

No kidding. While it’s not as syrupy and pop as Leppard’s ’87 jump the shark/rake in the big bucks moment, there’s some obvious similarities in softer approach, more femme-friendly multitrack vocal-augmented choruses and a nigh-utter lack of rockin’ riffs. About the closest you’ll find here are “road to babylon” and “lock up your daughter”, and even those are hardly Pete Willis worthy. Catchy, sure. But soft!

Third album Riot Avenue marks another change, but whether it’s an improvement or not depends on your orientation to this sort of thing. If you grew up on the sort of thing the mainstream/Hollywood glam acts were reduced to doing in the wake of GNR and just before grunge really wiped heavy music off the face of the Earth…or at least the States! for a good decade, you may think ’88-91 or so were just great years for metal (apart from the underground, which was rapidly cycling through the brief heydays of both thrash and death metal at the time).

Big hint: they weren’t. But don’t let that stop ya – if you like this sort of blues-rock heavy, toned down approach, rest assured Crazy Lixx has recaptured that sound here, leaving Riot Avenue both “heavier” in tone (check out “church of rock” for the best this gets) and more bastardized in sound.

It’s decent for what it is, and that Leppard thing is still present and accounted for in the chorus hooks and Danny Rexon’s Joe Elliottlike vocals, but I’m really not sure which album is better or worse between New Religion and Riot Avenue. Thankfully, better times would lie ahead with the upcoming self titled, leaving these two albums as transitional ones.

Ultimately, how many of these you run out and grab depends on just how much of a Crazy Lixx fan you are…or how much you miss Def Leppard in their later 80’s-early 90’s period.

For my money, Loud Minority is the ringer in the deck, the High N’ Dry or their career, their Under the Blade or Can’t Stop Rock N’ Roll.

You know – when the band was just plain credible, and pretty damn hard rocking, before becoming something of a poseur joke.

Well, OK, I’m talking Leppard and Sister more than Crazy Lixx there. But you get the general idea. In other words, don’t let the other two throw ya…and even if you (like us) enjoyed their later work as well, there’s little question that this first album was the band’s shining moment of glory.

You just set the bar high, fellas. Let’s see if you can beat that, with the upcoming album I hear you’re working on as we speak.

Things get fairly bombastic and sufficiently catchy, particularly on stronger tracks like “the last sacrifice”, “unforgivable” or even the somewhat overaggressive “punish you”, and the solos from six stringer Iivo Kaipainen are accomplished and speedy enough (if a tad generic as is so unfortunately common to the European school of power metal). So far, so good.

Vocals from apparent newcomer Lassi Vääränen are decidedly middle of the road, being too gravelly/raspy for the tastes of those looking for something more refined, operatically soaring and, well, powerful out of their power metal, but they’re not the worst you’ve heard by a long shot. “Acceptable” is about the best I can offer here.

But it really says something that the one truly standout track here is the one that’s blessed by Amaranthe’s Elize Ryd, a woman who’s clearly too good for the band she’s associated with (see also Amaranthe’s excellent cover of Powerwolf’s “army of the night”…she really needs to front better material than we’ve seen from, oh, say, Maximalism.*

* of course, Breaking Point showed hints of promise, so maybe the aforementioned album was just a huge-ass misstep…who the hell knows. The lady deserves better backing and material, regardless.

Bottom line, Arion is a band with definite promise and sufficient symphonic bombast to claw their way up to a higher rung of the European power metal ladder.

They may just need a bit more polish, a touch more originality…and while the guy does an admittedly fair job, I’m calling for a stronger front(wo)man.

Hey, Elize…opportunity knocks! Care to swap bands with Laasi?

Think about it.

Please. You both need it.

Bonfire – Legends (AFM Records) (October 19)

We’d covered their Temple of Lies earlier this year, the second of what now becomes a trilogy of post-Michael Reece (and briefly, Michael Boormann) releases for the band.

Now, two albums in one year? That just seems crazy…until you realize that this admittedly massive 33 track collection is nothing more than a bunch of covers.

What’s odd about this is not confined to the sheer number of covers attempted here, but that there are several tracks apiece from a given band. Toto gets two, Rainbow gets three, UFO gets three as well, as does Queensryche. By comparison, Asia, Kiss and Deep Purple get one apiece, as does (of all people) Leonard Cohen (!)

The rest of the tracks here…I’ve never heard of, how about you? I gather the last three are from the same band (as they’re all entitled in Deutsch), but that’s 18 out of 33. Who the fuck are these other bands they’re drawing from, or at least what albums and songs are these?

These are all songs that supposedly “greatly moved” members of the band…nearly half of which are complete bogglers.

Oh, and even funnier? The original idea was to have a big package tour, with the bands’ respective frontmen singing their own songs while Bonfire played backing band…an obviously unwieldy touring proposition that gave way to…yeah, just a simple covers album. Alrighty, then!

Most covers albums are more or less unnecessary, though some can introduce newbies to some cool acts they’d never heard before. Remember all those vintage Metallica covers of obscure NWOBHM and punk acts, back in the Garage Days days? How about Hammerfall’s Masterpieces, or the Communio Lupatum covers disc with the last Powerwolf album? Trust me, hearing Noora from Battle Beast belt out “resurrection by erection” is something you won’t want to miss…

Problem here is, the songs you know have been beaten into the ground over the decades – stuff even your grandpa can sing along to (and may have been part of a band that covered the same songs!) And the others? Let’s just say there’s no “the wait”, “crash course in brain surgery” or “last caress” here to inspire listeners to find out just who the hell Budgie and the Misfits were. (Killing Joke, well…Metallica did ’em better on that one.)

Inessential, but encyclopedic.

If you can figure out who the other 13 songs or so are even by, that is.

JOSE RUBIO – Forbidden Dreams (Fighter Records) (November 7)

Evil Hunter‘s six stringer and a former member of Warcry (if that name rings any bells) here drops a modern day version of a Shrapnel shred album.

“Land of terror” kicks things off promisingly neoclassical and shredworthy, only to immediately falter into Joe Satriani/Steve Vai solo album territory with the slurring, legato-heavy whammy bar fest “infinity” and the “song before the solo” approach of “lionheart” (which was clearly designed for full band and vocals, rather than as an instrumental).

“Without you” continues the Satch thing, “forbidden dreams” once again beggars a full band with its decided AOR leanings, hell, “mastermind” even goes full on “Satch boogie” with its Surfing With the Alien knockoff approach.

Thankfully, closer “no mercy” pulls us right back into power metal territory, with an aggressive riff reminiscent of more recent Impelliteri and some brief, if appropriately speedy and driving legato riffs somewhat in the vein of Racer X or Jason Becker (though not quite on that level…maybe Tony MacAlpine would be a closer analogue here?)

Look, bottom line, the guy’s a damn good player, he’s got some strong songwriting skills (as noted, several of these could be converted into vocal/full band tracks with very little effort, if any) and he’s clearly capable of the full on shredding I was primed and ready for.

But sadly, that doesn’t seem to be in the man’s blood, or at least to be his M.O. here – he’d rather go for the “melodic instrumental” approach of folks like Satriani, Vai, Greg Howe and suchlike over the jaw dropping likes of early Malmsteen, Gilbert with Racer X, earlier Marty Friedman (at least through Rust in Peace), Jason Becker, Joey Tafolla or Vinnie Moore…or even MacAlpine, to be honest.

This is a man who prefers to pull his punches, and while it’s dead obvious he’s in the upper echelons skillwise and can write a good melodic track, it’s this innate reluctance to just cut loose and let ‘er rip that hurts him more than it ever may help, in the end.

Next time, my friend? Give those songwriting hangups and melodic inhibitions a well deserved bird, and just fucking wail.

Kalidia – The Frozen Throne (Inner Wound Recordings) (November 23)

Symphonic power metal out of Italy. Rather than the expected Rhapsody/Elvenking sort of sound, they’re more akin to a far more generic, straightforward take on Xandria.

Frontwoman Nicoletta Rosellini comes off somewhere between a more properly power metal version of Cristina Scabbia and a completely non-operatic variant of Dianne Van Giersbergen. You get some strings and piano (“to the darkness I belong”), but most of this is uber-basic template power metal in its lighter, more femme-friendly symphonic variant (though without the drama and cinematically orchestral heft associated thereto).

A few tracks here come off rather Delain-esque, like “go beyond” and the obligatory snoozer of a ballad “midnight’s chant”, but Kalidia is by no means as polished or radio friendly as the Dutchmen.

Solos are negligible at best, serving a workmanlike purpose while making zero impression on the listener. They’re there, but you won’t exactly notice.

And that’s the problem with this one. Despite an attractive, Gal Godot-esque frontwoman with a pleasant enough midrange alto, they’re simply too cookie cutter and basic, a program delivered out of the box without any customization.

Yeah, they’ll fit right in the bottom to middle of a bill of similarly minded acts.

But you won’t remember them 5 minutes after they’ve left the stage, and that’s a problem.

Interestingly, Waiting for the Dawn sounds quite USPM (particularly on the bonus track “Nightfall”, which falls somewhere between Crimson Glory and Solar Eagle!) and original frontman Yiannis Papanikolaou only cements that vibe, with a fittingly Midnight meets Dale Thompson tonality and (over)dramatic approach.

It was arguable how to classify this one, in fact – the label refers to the band as “melodic metal”, and my first thought was “traditional metal”…but no, that’s decidedly US power metal bleeding through each and every note. Even the obligatory power ballad “last thing I’ll remember” sounds quite Heir Apparent.

Bottom line, Waiting for the Dawn is a top notch, highly recommended release for fans of classic USPM (originally released in ’98, but there were still a few strong demo acts working the proggier end of US power late into that decade, so it fits.)

The next two releases feature second (but not last!) InnerWish frontman Babis Alexandropoulos, which…let’s not beat around the bush, here…is a definite step down.

I mean, sure, he’s an understandable choice as a replacement and far from being a lousy singer, but his more middle of the road, far less bombastic and dramatic approach loses all the authority and authenticity Papinakolaou brought to the table. It’s subtle, perhaps…but immediately noticeable from the first moments of
“dancer of the storm”. Oh, boy…not the same band at all, is it?

The production on followup Silent Faces is also somewhat more intrusive and overstated, likely having moved from a more traditional analog based recording to the more modern ProTools every instrument right up front fighting with one another sort of thing. It may sound fine coming off your favorite postmillenial European power metal album, but after Waiting for the Dawn? It just sounds cheap, and wrong, somehow.

To make up for these dual (comparative) deficiencies, guitarists Thimios Krikos and Manolis Tsigkos really step up their dual lead game, delivering a Maidenesque harmony that moves into more impressive and neoclassical territory and back again, seamlessly punctuating each other’s solos in a way we haven’t heard since the heyday of Stryper. Nice stuff…too bad about the change in vocalist and production style.

Even so, this is far from being a lousy album…in fact, it’s pretty damn good, by Euro power metal standards. It just ain’t no USPM, that’s for damn sure…and there’s a huuuuge difference between the two in style and quality, even now when I can personally say that I very much enjoy both on their own respective merits.

Case in point…unless you play ’em back to back like we just did for this review (in which case the drop in quality is unavoidable and very much evident).

Inner Strength shows a band more comfortable with their new, far more Euro power metal sound, with a beefed up (if admittedly thinner toned and hissy/prone to signal bleed on the guitars and drums) production and more assured feel all around.

Tracks like “far away” and “lonely lady” borrow openly from scene leaders like Helloween and Iron Savior, immediately evident in the driving yet singsongy lead lines, while others like “bleeding soul” and “eye of the storm” clearly draw from earlier, equally influential acts like Europe and (early) Pretty Maids (with the latter also very much evoking Hammerfall in its melodic vocals paired with crunchy riffing and anthemic Accept-like choruses.

Newcomers to the band will gravitate to the first and/or third albums, depending on whether the listener’s affections lean more towards the darker, more NWOBHM/thrash orientations of USPM or the sweet n’ light, more polished European school of power metal.

Silent Faces shows a band very much in transition, falling comfortably into neither camp, but Euro fans will appreciate its vagaries far more than those (like yours truly) whose eyes widen with excitement for albums like Waiting for the Dawn (however much the likes of Inner Strength may be appreciated or enjoyed).

Even so, it would be remiss not to end with this caveat: all three albums have their merits, without question…and yes, I did very much enjoy each of ’em, however dissimilar one was from those appending.

Your move.

Hangman’s Chair – Banlieue Triste (Spinefarm Records) (September 28)

What would you get if you crossed the depressive, non-standard take on doom of Warning, the shoegaze indie pretensions of Alcest and a hint of grunge?

Apparently, this drug-obsessed French “stoner” doom act, who sound nothing like any stoner rock act you can imagine and barely fall under the header of doom stylistically…and yet, like Warning, simultaneously cannot be pigeonholed as anything but doom, through and through.

Yeah, at their best (“sleep juice”, “04 09 16”, even to a lesser extent “tired eyes”), you can hear a whole lot of Warning in this.

No, they’re not as emotionally wrought and oversensitive soul ripped raw and exposed for all to see as Patrick Walker got on Watching From a Distance. That’s a rare achievement, or perhaps more accurately, slip – you’re not going to find many folks brave or stupid enough to let all that hang out in public.

But for a bunch of French junkies (by their own admission, mind – I’m not throwing anything out there they haven’t already worn as a badge of honor)?

Yeah, this one’s amazingly solid, and one of the closest things I’ve heard to Warning this side of Ghostbound.

THEM – Manor Of The Se7en Gables (Steamhammer / SPV) (October 26)

You know, usually I don’t look at the promo writeups till I’ve gotten a few songs in and made up my own mind and delivered my own impressions.

But when you get an opener mentioning a cross between US power metal and “songs that focus on lyrics about spooks and horror”, then damn, you’ve got my bemused attention.

It’s hard to say from the way this was written, but it also looks like our old pal Mike LePond (Symphony X, Midnight Eternal, et al) has dropped by as “a guest musician during the studio recordings” (though the listed bassist is…someone else. Go figure.)

Okay, so we start off with “punishment by fire” (yeah, it’s the last track, you know the story, regular readers…) which kicks off as by the numbers black metal, all tremelo riffed sinisterness and blastbeats…before it turns sort of thrash, then goes full on King Diamond (complete with helium squeal “storytelling” and multiple voices). There’s even a solo that’s sort of like a half-assed Andy LaRocque…

So now back to the (actual) start with “residuum”, an instrumental build that pulls us back into (Euro) power metal territory…which is where “circuitous” (which intrepid frontman KK Fossor says wrong throughout, as “ser-kit-us” rather than “ser-kew-it-us”. I’ll give the guy a break, as English may or may not be his second language, but it really irks the grammar nazi in me!) leaves us.

In fact, the better part of the album is somewhere between an overblown, overdramatic and overly polished (and curiously riff-deficient) Bay Area thrash and European power metal. Think Blind Guardian covering King Diamond while simultaneously trying to be Xentrix, and you have a pretty good idea of what to expect here.

So now on to the subjective side of this. How do I feel about the King Diamond template taken power metal? Well, that part isn’t so bad, actually.

While as much of a ripoff of Kim Bendix Petersen’s schtick as Portrait and In Solitude were, THEM’s (the name should be a big ass hint, folks…) formula actually works better by pulling things in a slightly different, if admittedly complementary direction. The extra cheese and faux-symphonic bombast worked well enough, even with Fossor pulling in a lot of Hansi Kursch’s Queen obsessiveness on the often hugely vocalled choruses.

What didn’t work here was not only the loss of genuine sinister feel (particularly in the Black Rose/Mercyful Fate/Fatal Portrait-Melissa era) that Petersen always brought to the table, but the fact that we’ve not merely moved from a darkly progressive neoclassical metal to a more blunt Euro power metal approach, but a mediocre, overly clean and dull late period Bay Area thrash one.

Honest advice? Drop the pretensions towards being some sort of cut-rate Metallica, Testament or Forbidden (or hell, Meliah Rage!) entirely, and just go with the almost symphonic power metal King Diamond schtick.

While perhaps a tad ill fitting for the intended spukschloss, that part of what you’re doing works well enough.

Atreyu – In Our Wake (Spinefarm Records) (October 12)

Curse purveyors Atreyu return after 2015’s Long Live to offer…toy piano, strings and a major key, almost countrified sound.

Seriously. At least on closer “super hero”, anyway.

For the rest of the album, we’re treated to pop radio-geared tracks like “house of gold” and “anger left behind”, the Fall Out Boy-esque chant-a-longs “the time is now” and “no control” (both of which feel primed and ready for a Riverdale episode) and the dead on Nashville of “terrified”.

Then there’s the nu metal track.

Seriously.

Despite some dead on social commentary in the lyrics (yeah, you should at least read them, folks…) “blind deaf & dumb” is a whiteboy rapper’s delight, somewhere between Kid Rock and Limp Bizkit until the more emo/metalcore clean melodic chorus takes over…

This is a much mellower, less screamo-inclined Atreyu, one who’s left all pretense towards metalcore behind in favor of a more laid back, radio oriented, sing a long chorus driven, even country style take on emo.

Hell, even the one standout track here and not coincidentally the one closest appending to their earlier style (opener “in our wake”) is still more…muted.

I mean, yeah, I can do without all the silly screaming bits myself…but where’s the power, the energy, the inner rage that metalcore taps into so well, for all its At the Gates swipes as a genre?

I guess this is like what happened to AFI after Davey had surgery on his vocal chords, and we got…Decemberunderground.

Yeesh.

Well, OK, In Our Wake is probably a much better album than that radical shift in direction and style…never buy a favorite band’s albums before you hear any of their songs, kids. Made the same mistake with Ghost, after Opus Eponymous…and then the fanboys add insult to injury by pretending that “ghouleh” was some fucking masterpiece instead of the utter piece of shit it (and its album, and the band per se) actually was.

But be warned…this band has traveled a long, long way from the days of The Curse.

Outer Heaven – Realms of Eternal Decay (Relapse Records) (October 12)

Pennsylvanian death metal.

Yeah, I have no idea if that’s a thing now, but that’s where these kids hail from, and they’re first timers. Take that for what it’s worth.

Production is odd, with thick toned bottom end guitars that are either double tracked or somehow filtered to simultaneously bleed high end red zone signal distortion – so they’re good on one hand, and fucking awful at the exact same time. How the hell do you do that?

Similarly, the vox, which are straightforward death belch/vomit vox, but which are tripled via digital manipulation into some weird, noisy mess. It’s like they took a ton of slap echo and reverb, isolated it onto the vocal track, then stripped any room ambience or whatever, so it just fucks with the voice itself, making the guy sound like a live action Grimer or something.

And the actual riffs? Pretty damn basic, usually high speed, sometimes feeling like they want to go all “tech” with the single note tremelo riffs, but leaning far more towards the uber-simplicity of grindcore.

Not sure how much of this is the band themselves (though it’s obvious they bear at least a fair portion of the blame) and how much is down to some very iffy production. Seriously…how did you get the guitars AND vocals to simultaneously sound like they could have been OK, and fuck them up totally at the same time? Who is this guy?

Either way…hard to say if the band themselves have any measure of promise, buried beneath some unfortunate studio work, or if it’s better to just call this a loss.

I’m very much inclined towards the latter.

Witch Casket – Punishment (October 15)

Black/death with emphases on “death” and oddly, “Southern groove”. Did we mention “founded by members of Devildriver”?

Sure enough, all the bounce and Zakk Wylde harmonic squelches are in place, as is the crisp production, wheedly-whoo solos and howl n’ growl vox more associated with more modern day (i.e. yawn inducing) variants of death metal, but with the overriding stench of grim, tremelo riffed black-slash-whatever predominating.

Well, OK, it’s just as much of the groove thing, so maybe these guys should be classified as “blackened groove” or “black/Pantera”?

“Spectres of misery” is pretty damn listenable, no question.

Unfortunately, that’s about the best you’re going to find herein…the rest is all straight downhill from there, with all the factors of increasingly worsening downward momentum that metaphor implies.

Skull Fist – Way of the Road (NoiseArt Records) (October 26)

You know, Jackie Slaughter was one of the very first musicians I went after when shifting the focus of the podcast from cult cinema (a pool of worthy guests of which was dwindling by the day, given the remove of years from their notable work and the time of recording – time waits for no man) to music.

After many years upgrading and dusting the cobwebs off cassettes, vinyl and CDs in the collection since the 80’s and several years spent in black (myself) and gothic/symphonic (myself and the wife), the first real discovery since realizing metal may not have in fact died outside these pathetically aggro, nu-, hip hop and grunge obsessed shores was the burgeoning movement towards retro-traditional metal, mainly centered around the Carolinas (Viper, Widow, the overly slavish Maiden cover act Twisted Tower Dire) and Toronto (Cauldron,Skull Fist).

So naturally, the first thought occurring to me was to grab some of these folks, to see just what brought them back around to real music they hadn’t even come up on (and yes, this was years before just about every genre of music started looking backwards for something other than generic autotuned children’s rhyme gibberish passing as music).

Jackie, taking a bus ride during our first discussion (seriously), was not only the sort of friendly you generally only see in Canadians, but funny as hell…which led to a second round a year or two later, when they actually had something out through one of the labels who regularly drop materials our way for review. Both fun interviews, both really good albums in their own right (as were the fits and starts prior to both, with member changes galore).

So, beyond making the big step of marriage (long belated congrats, by the way!) and dropping some rather different toned solo material, you have to wonder…what changed?

I mean, the core of the group has remained pretty stable over their trio of full length studio efforts, with co-guitarist Johnny (“Exciter”) Nesta and Casey (“Slade”) Guest on bass. There’s still some decent soloing, some moody metal-style riffing that brings old Dokken to mind…

…but the speed is gone, and so is the shred. Worst of all? The infectious, seemingly unflappable joie de vivre of this Canadian skatepunk gone full on 80’s glam/shred maniac appears to have given way to a far darker, more pensive frontman.

The vocal highs aren’t the Nitro meets TNT by way of Vinnie Vincent Invasion/Slaughter helium squeals anymore, the songs don’t rip by like they were running on combustible alcohol…and those jaw dropping high speed harmonic minor shred solos are gone entirely, in favor of a more midtempo, almost pentatonic style with light flash punctuation.

Is it acceptable old school-minded metal? Definitely.

Is it Skull Fist?

Well…no.

Not sure where Jackie is at these days, emotionally and existentially speaking…but if you (like yours truly) gravitate towards what he was putting forth on the last two albums (and the prior demo and EP), then consider this fair warning: that spirit has left the building.

A decidedly dispirited, far darker Skull Fist awaits.

Consider this their Realized Fantasies, but realize it goes much darker than that could ever imply.

Here the Edmonton natives navigate those tar sands to deliver an album that’s oddly more akin to the lighter end of traditional metal, even pushing AOR at times. “Hands of time”, “standing alone” and “head first” feel like Final Countdown-era Europe castoffs, while the crunchier riffing on “heard of lies” and “position of power” bring them closer to early Pretty Maids. It’s been a lot of years since I’ve heard them, but “the front” even brought Tyketto to mind, with “summoner” and “heavy is the heart” coming off rather Y&T.

As you can tell from all those comparitives, this is some seriously competent, melodic and polished material with a bit of crunch to beef things up a bit…but that beggars a flipside question.

To wit: are Striker still the thrash act they once (and perhaps still do) marketed themselves as?

Because I’m not hearing that, in the least…and you won’t either.

These guys get more traditional and later 80’s sounding by the album. Which if you’re not trying to market ’em as thrashers, is definitely a good thing.

Unmaker – Firmament (October 19)

Wait, whoa, what?

You’re telling me this was recorded this year, and not even in the UK, but fucking Richmond, Virginia?

Sure enough, the bass-driven, 16th note hi-hat bedecked, moaning and (faux) British accented vocals of vintage 80’s gothic rock/”positive punk”/postpunk are all present and accounted for, as is the experimental guitar of everyone from Bauhaus, Gang of Four, Echo and the Bunnymen and early Simple Minds to The Pop Group.

Yeah, I may have mixed the bass even further upfront and given it a thicker tone; perhaps pushed the guitars back somewhat and slathered them in era-appropriate reverb.

When you think Southern traditional folk, I’m sure you immediately flash on a guy who at one point or another did at least demo work with folks like former Jag Panzer six stringer Chris Broderick’s Act of Defiance, the Swans’ Jarboe and members from Gorgoroth and Anthrax (!?!)

Right?

uh…yeah, OK, me either.

Well, he covers creepy old kid’s tune “have you seen the ghost of john” (no shit, “no skin”) and brings a Sono Mortisensibility to this semi-Prophecy Productions “gothic Americana” affair, all acoustic guitars and drums with light electric guitar backup.

There are hints of everyone from Tom Waits to John Cougar Mellencamp and Bruce Cockburn to be found herein, but the quality is more akin to Cockburn (particularly circa his amazing Christmas album) and the tone far darker than you’d expect. This may be classifiable as neofolk, but it’s of a particularly bleak and grim bent, to be sure.

There are a few tracks where the electric guitar actually predominates and Elis goes more…well, it’s not really “metal”, but it’s certainly darker and more propulsive than what most folks consider “rock” these days (“corpse carver”, the instrumental “graveyard country blues” – the latter of which is practically worthy of The Devil’s Blood, with all that awful/beautiful ghostly female wailing).

I was sold with the latter track and his covering “the ghost of John”, the rest is just icing on the cake.

We’d covered their reissue of early material cleverly entitled Vol. 1 last year, and here they are again, this time with a full album of all new material.

As ever, it’s something of a mixed bag genre blender, drawing from 70’s heavy rock and 60’s radio pop, “occult rock” and bordering on a proto stoner doom.

Just to go by the best tracks, “blood runner” pulls in elements of Todd Rundgren, George Harrisonesque vocals and a decidedly Devils Bloodlike riff and drum pattern (something that also comes to the fore on “stranger tonight”), while “shockwave” swipes and simplifies the main riff from Focus’ “hocus pocus” and adapts it to new, even more depressively melodic ends.

Other tracks don’t fare quite so well as those standouts, but suffice to say if you appreciate the influences and sound being evoked thereby, the rest o’ them apples don’t fall far from the tree, so to speak.

While hardly a standardbearer of the type, given their tendency to rely on noise overlays and nigh-phoned in processed vocals and with a nearly bubblegum pop sensibility burbling just beneath the surface throughout, there’s plenty to appreciate here if you aren’t put off by the sheer 70’s AM radioness of it all.

If this were an EP containing just the tracks aforementioned, this would be a profound bit of praise. As is, not bad, if you’re in that vintage mood.

Pale Divine – S/T (CD, LP, TAPE) (Shadow Kingdom) (November 23)

The more doom and stoner rock I get exposed to, the more I’m seeing a strange disparity.

Now, to be fair, Pale Divine does feel a lot closer to template, at least on tracks like “bleeding soul”, “so low” or “curse the shadows”. But when the rest of the album feels more akin to stoner (if not a slightly darker toned Southern groove), complete with Life of Agonyesque semi-howled vocals?

Nah, this may be close kin at points…but doom, it ain’t.

As such, you’ve got 8 tracks to contend with here. I mentioned the 3 you’ll actually want to hear, all of which were pretty damn good indeed.

The rest sound OK, if you’re in the mood for a decidedly 90’s style Southern fried take on stoner rock…but won’t even come close to filling the bill if you’re craving some quality doom.

Noisy, poorly produced, edge of your seat and about to go off the rails. Are you sure this isn’t some Hells Headbangers blackthrash act, either Midwestern born or of South American extraction?

Nope, these guys are some seriously drunk and rowdy Canadians, with vicious dog snarled “vocals” (think somewhere between Desaster, Japan’s Abigail and the rawer end of German speed, possibly Darkness) and simplistic but driving blackthrash riffing.

This is seriously basic stuff, half retro (check the reverb all over the snarly vox) and half modern (nobody got away with releasing stuff that sounded quite this bad back in the day…even demo acts had better production!) It works, with little hints of Hellhammer (“thrall to the gallows”), early Bathory (the vox, some of the riffs) and the entire Brazilian blackthrash scene (the rest of the riffs, the rawness and naive feel).

If you came up on this stuff (back in the day, the few bands you could lay hands on the EPs and cassettes of out of Germany and Brazil sounded like literally nothing else out there, despite their blatant indebtedness to both Slayer and Venom…both decidedly slower and more sedate acts by far!), it’ll feel like old home week, shit production aside.

Rare are the times you’ll catch me knocking bands working this sound, so if you’re looking for negatives, I’ve already said as much as I ever will.

Big shocker: those points having been made, I was good with it.

BLACK INK RIVER – Headstrong (GMR Music) (October 5)

Swedish “classic rock” act. They’re marketing this one like a retro-70’s thing, but you won’t hear much different from what you would with, say, the latest Snakecharmer or your local bar band.

Vocals are pretty quirky (if not intentionally camped up, with all that warbling tone), the riffing is strictly forgettable bar band blues rock somewhere in the Jeff Healey/Robert Cray/Black Crowes school of playing. Perhaps even Stevie Ray Vaughn (you can hear hints of Hendrix stylings buried in there too), but at a far more pedestrian level skillset.

Solos are competent and melodic, but unlikely to wow anyone in the audience (except perhaps for the very, very drunk woman dancing crazily at center stage, but she’d think anything was great at this level of inebriation…)

Yeah…nothing wrong with it if they wind up as the house band sans cover charge at your local watering hole. But nothing to write home about, either.

Oberon – Aeon Chaser (Prophecy Productions) (October 26)

We covered Bard Oberon and company’s Dream Awakening four years ago, but to look at what we saw in that album and what’s on display here, there must have been some profound changes…

Somewhere between the sort of introspective darkwave that Sam Rosenthal made a hallmark of the Projekt Records roster (if not, in some ways, Black Tape for a Blue Girl itself) and the dead serious occultism of The Devils Blood and Saturnian Mist (I’d say King Satan as well, but there’s too much Crowleyan piss-taking involved in the latter to qualify as po-faced), here Oberon returns with a frankly bizarre album that melds that darkwave sound with something more driving (even beyond postpunk, but not really gothic rock per se) and in certain respects (get this) metallic (“walk in twilight”, “surrender”, to some extent both “omega” and “the secret fire”).

There’s keyboard and electronic elements playing against syrupy traditional instrumentation (the violin swells of “lost souls”, for example) and straight up neofolk (“laniakea”)…but then tag in all that aggression and dark drive, the distorted guitars and moments that border on industrial (“surrender” again)…and those lyrics.

So…was this intended as a devotional? Seriously, is this another Sabbath Assembly sort of thing? Because it’s certainly above not only the mainstream, but speaks to concepts and points well beyond the level of adept. I’ll close the topic by saying it’s hardly suitable as a beginners manual, and I’ll leave it at that.

With a cocked eyebrow and pensive hum, I sit back and deliberate on the matter. What to say, what to seal under the sign of Harpocrates, as it were…

Yeah, I don’t recall being struck by the sheer blatancy of this matter on Dream Awakening…hell, we spoke of him coming off as a bit hippie at the time.

Interesting.

Let’s leave it at that.

Nochnoy Dozor – S/T EP (Prophecy Productions) (October 26)

You know, Prophecy is certainly expanding its roster of late.

Now, I don’t mean that in terms of “signing new musicians to the label”, but in terms of “breaking out of label orientation and strict adherence to genre conventions”.

This is a label known mostly for a dark, almost gothic take on neofolk and traditionalist musics, with excellent (even crystalline) production and, it must be said, nearly impeccable taste. Few indeed are the Prophecy releases we’d covered in these pages that I don’t recall as being fairly exemplary – certainly for the form, if not per se.

But here, while adhering to the more important aspects of the preceding paragraph, we stretch well beyond anything traditionalist to – get this – pop music.

Okay, so it’s gothically oriented, dark and depressive pop, once again featuring excellent production…and displaying the good taste of the label’s head(s) in digging up an act so ostensibly far removed from their usual sound, yet so oddly complementary thereto at the same time.

Two dark female alto voices (a “Lina” serves as frontwoman, while “Revekka” serves as keyboard/synth and offers backing vocals at choruses and various points of emphasis throughout) drive the enterprise with an oddly pop radio tonality, while laid back guitar, bass and electronic tones provide lush, swirling atmospherics.

Drums punctuate at a glacial, stoner rock tempo, which serves them well when matters suddenly shift to more pronounced doom phrases (or entire songs, such as “ben-hur”), but the best parts here are actually when everyone steps back and mellows out to a dark, late evening evocativeness (most of “black hand”, “stains”, “home sick home”, to some extent even “closer”).

In the end, what exactly are Nochnoy Dozor? A particularly lush, radio friendly gothic doom act? An especially gloomy electronic synthpop/darkwave act? Who the hell knows, they’re straddling several horses here.

But the important thing to take away from here is, they’re damn good…particularly if you appreciate gothic darkwave, female fronted gothic/symphonic metal and/or gothic doom (much less all of the above, like yours truly).

A real find, and it looks like they’re offering this dirt cheap on their bandcamp (sadly, digital only).

Overall, this one’s just really strange. Think somewhere between Siouxsie at her most strident and Diamanda Galas in her Baudelaire days,(*and**) over brooding drone bass and atonal to experimental guitar (at its best, sounding like David J and Daniel Ash working vintage Bauhaus (“a curse”), at its worst, pushing straight into pointless noise territory (“fear’s ascent”, “wound and scar”.)

* until she decides to devolve into shrieking like a mental patient, on “a hideous visage” and “wound and scar”. Yeah, we can all do without that, thank you very much…

** oh, and occasionally, she brings it down to straight up chanting, or damn close to it – thus bringing the aforementioned ritualistic feel to the table.

Again, there’s a lot about this that dances around the outer edges of the gothic scene…but then you have the atonal bits and the shrieking screamo nonsense to deal with as well.

When they were more controlled and gloomy, with clean to chanted vocals, it wasn’t too bad…but the other stuff leaves a decidedly awful taste in the mouth.

Vanishing Kids – S/T (Svart Records) (November 30)

Trippy psychedelia with a heavy prog rock bent. Once again, they’re being mismarketed as “doom”…

Vox are clean, but light and trippy in a decidely indie rock manner, and riffs veer from clean and almost Chris Isaakesque (“eyes of secrets”) to throatily distorted in a more stoner rock manner, but there’s precious little linking this listenably odd melange to doom, rather than a drugged out space rock with stoner, prog and indie leanings.

Make no mistake, it’s pleasantly listenable and even emotional at times (“rainbows”)…but to call bands like Pale Divine and Vanishing Kids “doom” is reeeeeally stretching said genre qualifier to its very limits.

Bottom line: about as doom as a Killers album. But pretty decent, for all that.

Trees – S/T (Svart Records) (December 7)

Finnish “classic rock” in a more (very) late 60’s/(very) early 70’s vein than usual.

Frontman Santeri Vanttinen sounds quite Neil Young on tracks like “lovers”, while six stringer Joose Keskitalo provides a more sophisticated, even jazzy chordal structure to the contrapuntal interplay between his guitar and Teemu Muikku’s ever-throbbing walking basslines.

This would have been a lot more well constructed and again, sophisticated than most of what we cover herein, were it not coming from Svart Records, who seem to be in a race with Prophecy Productions as to who can gather more interesting darkly inclined yet folkishly oriented acts to their respective rosters. As such, it’s no anomaly, but fairly typical of what to expect from the label…

Now, again, this is effectively hippie music, given the sound, orientation and musicians it’s crafted in the style of, so the darker, more cultish regulars might as well move right along – this one is most assuredly well outside of your comfort zone.

But if, like yours truly, the long death of metal (and good music per se) what was the 1990s led you to older, more interesting genres and styles of music than the sort of aggro, grunge and proto-hipster shit the majority gravitated towards like a horde of lemmings, you may well find this one pleasantly reminiscent of a time when the youth of the world actually believed in something…and was able to get generations of older folks, however reluctantly, to sit up and pay attention for a decade or so.

Selah.

SHIBALBA – Stars Al-Med Hum (Agonia Records) (November 23)

Absolutely pointless dark ambient from two members of Acherontas, whose Amenti and MaIoN left very little impression on us.

We’d covered this side project’s Psychostasis early last year and the same warnings apply.

Oogity boogity to you, too.

(suppresses a well deserved yawn, casually flicks CD into the Flaming Pyre of Dead Bards)

Very much in the vein of bands like Nightsatan (but without the silly masks and costumes), this is more of the Kraftwerk/Rheingold school of composition, but as informed by the dancier likes of earlier Depeche Mode, Yaz, Real Life, Cetu Javu and suchlike.

You get the general idea – this stuff was huge on the dancefloors of the era, and perhaps even moreso in the late 90’s (at least to go by a longtime neo-DJ friend’s ever expanding collection of deep club 12″ and mix tapes to which I was regularly exposed at the time). Even big names like Erasure and Pet Shop Boys had minor radio hits remixed and transmorgified into this sort of thing on a regular basis, improving their material dramatically thereby…

Brought me right back to some of my wildest and edgiest years, which is a good thing (particularly after too many years spent “settling down” and into real-world dictated corporate bullshit work).

There’s enough of a quirky edge to this to suggest the band is, as the promo materials claim, actually some sort of prog act…but it still feels like we all just walked in on a hipster coffeehouse on open mic night.

The only track that really stood out here was “cell”, which feels rather…Jefferson Airplane. There’s a definite 60’s heavy/psychedelic rock vibe to it, with an interesting bass riff and Richie Havensesque aggressively strummed guitars, that just felt right where the rest of the album comes off rather bland by comparison.

No idea how these guys sound “plugged in”, but one can only hope they lean more in the direction of “cell” going forward…that one track is definitely worth your time to check out.

Diamond Head – “Bones” (September 24)

Well, this track didn’t download well! So trying to ignore the fact that what I’m listening to sounds like it was recorded underwater, all digital swish and swirl noise throughout…

Brian Tatler is at it again. This attempt to replace the great Sean Harris features a more Hollywood sleaze rock style frontman, one Rasmus Bom Andersen. He can howl those fermata notes, alright, just expect a whole lot of rasp and thin tone by comparison. Then again…who the fuck could replace Sean Harris?

Now, again…can you seriously expect another Lightning to the Nations, after all this time? Hardly.

But that being something of a given, “bones” is probably the most promising track I’ve heard out of the Diamond Head camp in many a year, leaving more hope for their impending full length than you’d ever have expected.

Time will tell.

Ottone Pesante – APOCALIPS (November 2)

We’d previously reviewed this amusing Italian gimmick band’s Brassphemy (Set in Stone) early last year and got a hearty laugh out of their good natured screwing with genre expectations.

Hey, look, here comes the “metal” band! Get it? Brass? Horn section?

So yeah, you get Zappaesque transliterations of rock and metal tunes and tropes to more classical instrumentation, lending a far more orchestral and jazzy feel to what were previously some fairly simplistic and workaday rock band riffs and arrangements.

About the only part that feels ‘off’ here is the very one that ensures Ottone Pesante is accepted among metal audiences, namely, the blastbeat drumming. Sure, even that is performed in a manner far more off kilter and traditional in approach…but it cheapens the arrangements just as much as it grants them access to the further reaches of the “extreme metal” umbrella. Less annoying than usual, and not incessant, but still an aspect we could do without (here or anywhere).

Amusingly enough, they actually drag in extra comedy along the same lines by pulling in the guy from grindcore staples Cattle Decapitation to gargle snot and towards the end, even sing like a girl! Seriously…check out around the 4:30 mark of his lovely contribution to the album (“the fifth trumpet”). Again, gives the band more “metal cachet”, but just leaves those expecting more quality in their music (metal or otherwise) snort derisively.

Like last time, I’m totally down with their Zappa/jazzed up takes on material that if performed on electric guitars would certainly have qualified as metal proper (and more to the thrash/prog death/djent end at that).

Bottom line, it’s amusing and clever…just could do with less of the blastbeats and near-free jazz djenty note clusters in place of riffs, chords and harmonies, much less the comedy guest stars.

Lars Christmansson, who looks like a slightly younger Steve Grimmett and bears the corner of the mouth toothy yowled rasp of the late David Wayne (or perhaps even Bloodgood frontman Les Carlson), delivers the appropriate force and bombast over…well, that same track we covered last year, plus a new ‘A’ side (the driving US power metal-style “another desire”), a re-recording of a track off their 1995 debut (“sins of a father”) and two live Dio tribute show tracks (not included among the reviewable materials).

“Lion’s trial”, with its deliberate Acceptlike march tempo, probably showcases his voice best, leaving him plenty of room to really belt out those notes, but I did really enjoy the almost Thundersteel vibe of “another desire”.

“Sins of a father” is pretty wasted, an overly proggy and wayyyy too busy track that sounds nothing whatsoever like the other two tracks here – it’s a damn good thing that they’ve dropped that unfortunate approach, and not just because the man can barely squeeze a held note in edgewise betwixt all those random shifting single note patterns. It’s pretty bad, actually – whether it represents any improvement over its original incarnation is for longtime fans of the band to say.

If you haven’t already grabbed “the lion’s trial” based on last year’s praises, here’s your chance – “another desire” is a seriously killer addition, and who knows, the live Dio covers may not be bad either.

Too bad they weren’t included in the promo package.

Two excellent tracks out of 3, I’m calling that a definite win. So where’s that full length already?

But if you can dig equal parts Bikini Kill, Elastica, Veruca Salt and Sonic Youth, complete with aggressively pushy and in your face feminist lyric and attitude, you know just how strangely catchy (if jaw clenching) this sort of thing can be.

Yeah, Elastica’s a pretty good analogue for what I’m hearing here.

If you’re in the mood for the more indie rock end of that generally rather questionable era of music and sociopolitic, you can do a whole hell of a lot worse than this.

Hell, you may even like it. I kinda did.

OVERDRIVERS – She’s on her Period (SEPTEMBER 28)

And the award for tackiest album of the month goes to…

Seriously? And with song titles like “THE BEST BLOWJOB IN HISTORY” and “SHOW YOUR BOOBIES” appended to the title track.

Yeeeeeahhhh, classy. I’ll bet you guys are in hot demand with all the chicks…

(sighs profoundly, rolls eyes, shakes head)

You know what, I’m not even sharing the cover of this masterpiece of taste and decorum. Nothing to get excited about and chase down, mind…just crass and low class.

And it’s really too bad, because these Aussies bring the Dirty Looks/Spread Eagle gone AC/DC ‘A’ game to tracks like “ride the rockinghorse”, the aforementioned “best blowjob in history” and “King Arthur”, complete with fight-baiting, high speed highway driving top of the world attitude and killer pentatonic-driven high energy solos.

How can something this good come with such crass titles? And mind, this is a longtime fan of the double entendre saying this – Bon Scott and early Whitesnake are well in the blood, with the former being a personal teenaged hero of sorts…you can’t exactly say tracks like “the jack” or “big balls” were staples of high society decorum. Yet and still…yeesh!

If you aren’t shaking your head in disgust and/or disbelief at the album title and really dig the sort of quality material you find with old Dirty Looks and Bon Scott AC/DC, rest assured:

Overdrivers are keeping the high energy, old school boogie band hard rock flag raised high.

DXVXDXD SXLF (Divided Self) – OF WOLVES & MEN EP (November 20)

DVD Self? What the hell does that mean? Hey, Blu-Ray Self!

So what Cassingle Self actually offers is a sort of overly raspy vocalled (bordering at times on “extreme metal” croaking and aggro screamo) take on emo, but with annoyingly over-prominent, mixed right up front lead lines and solos.

Not since The Cult’s Electric has a guitar tone been so overpowering yet thin and piercing, nor has one been shoved so far in front of the rest of the band…maybe Guns N’ Roses at their most irritating, but not even that. Far from a positive, the way it’s mixed here is downright distracting and annoying.

That aside, there’s a lot in common between 8-Track Self and bands like My Chemical Romance in overall tone and approach…far more than it ever comes off “metal”, much less any form of “gothic”.

Fair enough, if you’re really into Gerard Way and company…but absolute crap if you were expecting “gothic metal” or suchlike, which Minidisc Self appear to be marketing themselves as.

Four songs, Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge.

ROZE – Q&A (QUESTIONS & ANSWERS) (September 21)

Okay, when you go looking around for info on this band, all you’ll find is some Japanese idol group…which this is decidedly not.

So the only “answers” I can offer to your “questions” are that these guys have a pronounced accent (which combined with the source who provided ’em for review suggests “they’re probably French”), that they’re quite melodic in inclination, and that between opener “fulfilling prophecy” and closer “agoraphobia”, you’ll hear elements of everything from semi-indie rock types like Lenny Kravitz and the Foo Fighters to prog rockers like Gentle Giant…if you can believe that juxtaposition!

When they’re in high gear, they’re busy enough (with palm muted tremelo riffing on the verses and plenty of shifts in modality and riff) and accomplished enough (did you read the part where we mentioned “prog”? How about the Gentle Giant comparison? Hmm?) to keep the more easily bored listener (cough no comment cough) paying attention…and enough melodicism (not to mention pleasant vocal
harmonies…Gentle Giant comes to mind again) to make ’em stand out from the crowd.

Now, it’s not all top notch. There’s plenty of filler here, which brings a more countrified pop rock to mind as comparatives (think shit like Hootie and the Blowfish, Counting Crows or even Dave Matthews in this respect). You could see your hipster friends or even (ugh) your parents listening to some of the lighter tracks here (“just a matter of time”, “tenants of my head”, etc.), while others simply stink of ’90s (“aftermath of the euphoria”, for example).

But be warned…the rest of the album is a big step down from there, and if you’re not expecting that precipitous drop in quality (well…OK, likeability and compatabilty for the Third Eye audience), it’s quite a doozy.

NORD – And Now There’s Only A River Left Behind (November 28)

Quirky post-black act out of France. There’s a lot of indie feel and inclinations towards both airy shoegaze and overly busy prog here, which is no surprise from the nation that gave us Alcest.

What may be a surprise is just how openly and aggressively emo a lot of this leans, particularly on tracks like “near death experience” or “ghost”, where they might as well be covering “Mr. Brightside”…or when they go almost djent (well…at least Unexpect!) on weird-ass tracks like “holy mountain”.

It’s really strange, but likely to appeal to some unforseen crossover audience between the post-black crowd and the indie prog audience.

Me? I was amused by Unexpect’s live show, when we caught them opening for Epica and Visions about a decade back…but their “music” remains all noise to me.

Sure, Nord’s definitely more melodic and straightforward than their French-Canadian forbears ever were.

Here the band seems to have evolved somewhat. “Oxygen” starts off as a sort of Matthew Sweet gone Nirvana, before turning all space rock in its final moments.

“Behind the blinds” takes more of a CoC approach, “the glitch” is quite biker band, arguably with a touch of ZZ Top, “Taranto train to Toronto town” goes full on stoner doom, “the other side” is what would happen if you took early Danzig and crossed ’em with Urge Overkill.

“She has a plan” goes back into Matthew Sweet territory, and “address unknown” goes back into a rather Obsessed-like take on stoner doom, before going space rock at the end.

So yeah, it’s a bit all over the place, particularly for a band that most closely appends to stoner rock. But just like last time?

It’s pretty good.

Deathkings – Ex Nihilo (December 7)

Oy, here’s another one of these supposed “blackened doom” acts.

Do they sound Hellhammerish, or Frost as filtered through black metal acts like Darkthrone or Clandestine Blaze? Nope. Do they sound even vaguely akin to the sludgy blackened doom of Goatlord? Nope.

I keep telling you people, management not responsible for injuries sustained from spitting embers and random flareups caused by bad music being consigned to the oblivion of the Flaming Pyre of Dead Bards…go put some toothpaste on that, it’ll help with the burns.

I liked the forefronting of the lead guitar (i.e. the solos taking as much prominence and importance as they do), the vox work, and while I preferred the doomier tracks to the more grunge leaning ones, it all just works.

Good stuff for the type – just expect a bit more Alice in Chains and Foghat in there, and a whole lot less Kyuss and Electric Wizard.

Swilson – S/T (Vanishing Point Records) (October 26)

Jersey City, of all places, delivers this Americanized Killers of an indie rock act.

Now, you could dig further back to the glam era and compare Swilson to the New York Dolls (particularly evident on openers “I like love” and “witchtrial modern day”, the latter of which is presumably about the disturbingly Cruciblelike #metoo thing, or should be), but even though those vintage tinkling one note piano bits pop up in “rats with wings”, the more of this album you hear, the less retro-70’s it actually sounds.

Very strong influences to be sure. But there’s too much of that faux-new wave modern day indie thing playing into this to even classify Swilson as the new Junkyard (which a few tracks here may further suggest).

It works well enough, and they’re probably real barnstormers at the local pub when everyone’s bombed out of their minds at 2am…but this sort of thing has inbuilt limitations (cough Buckcherry cough Black Crowes).

In other words, they do this sound right…but the sound itself doesn’t fly very far these days.

Again, if you are one of those old barflies who seriously groove on this sort of thing, Swilson’s pretty damn good at recreating such.

Crawling for Carrion – Rake and Roads (Giganto Records) (November 9)

A bit grunge, a bit depressively doom in inclination, but very much stoner.

Droning, almost chantlike clean male vox (think along the general lines of a Layne Staley, without the corner of the mouth shit or gravelly tones and as done by two guys in unison) mark “rake”, while throaty, almost gospel-style female vocals take over for “roads”.

Apparently both are covers, the latter being by UK misery mongers Portishead. No idea who the hell the other guy is, and really don’t care.

It’s a project rather than a band proper, from Chris West of Landskap, so apparently vocalists and drummers will remain “guest spots” throughout.

Not much else to say here, other than that it was very listenable…if a bit odd to hear what sounds like Paul Weller ex and Wham/Style Council vet Dee C. Lee belting out a stoner take on some obscure Portishead track!

Night Machine – Themes of the Dead (November 1)

Another one of these lazerpunk synthpop jobs, this time self-identifying as “synthwave”. Sure, whatever you want to call it. Same shit, different day.

This one man Casio band differs from the likes of Nightsatan or Anachronist by delivering some unusually spare, generally not incredibly catchy slasher film soundtrack style takes on the nascent genre.

About the closest things to memorable and propulsive you’ll find here are “dead party” and “hookhand”.

The rest, while quite similar to what you may hear (and more or less ignore) in a low end slasher film, don’t make enough of an impression to demand seeking out the soundtrack…even the wholly imaginary one being conjured out of the air here.

Not the worst thing you’ll ever hear, but misses the intended boat by a wide margin.

I guess if you cross The Residents with Mr. Bungle and tag in bits of both Sykotik Synfoney and GWAR (for the clearly tongue in cheek “sung by a garbageman for a laugh” vox), you might get something maybe half as fucked up and unlistenably “experimental” as this…

…then again, I like some Residents stuff. Even beyond freakout fests like “picnic in the jungle”, their Elvis, Hank Williams and James Brown reinterpretations are often quite priceless…

This, however, bears no such merits.

a well deserved WHIZZ!!! right into the Pile of Dead Bards, ever Flaming Pyre that it is.

Jeez, will they shut up?

Even burning to a crisp is too good for this one, apparently…

NEXT?!?

Kurokuma – Dope Rider (October 26)

Super fat guitar tones…I’d be willing to bet they were rocking Mesa Boogie amps here, it’s that powerful and thick toned. Opens on some thundering drones and sustain, with a deliberate syncopated drumbeat pounding away ominously, like the approaching hoofbeats of a hostile army. Yeah, this really sounds good…

…too bad about the Sludgelord Records-style “vocals” which once again consist of some archetypal beefy trucker type with a huge beard bellowing out to his favorite truck stop waitress for another refill of coffee and pork roll. Are all these stoner/sludge guys serious, with this apparently ubiquitous new “style” on the mic?

Well, that stupidity aside (and trust me, that’s one hell of a hurdle to get over, particularly when it gets more pointed and aggro on “pt. 2”), I certainly liked what they were doing with the guitar and drums, both in approach and in terms of tone, on “pt. 1”.

“Pt. 2” is them trying to go all faux-black metal, it just doesn’t work, period.

More like what we’re hearing in “pt. 1” and a new frontman, then yeah, this’d be a band to watch.

As is…hilariously stupid “vox” aside, check out “pt. 1” and forget the flipside.

Awaiting Sacrifice – Uprise (October 26)

Oh, look, it’s another Slipknot clone. I’m happy, aren’t you happy?

(shakes head in sad disbelief, sighs profoundly)

Yep, the fast gibberish is there (actually worsened by appending grindcore-style pig noises to same), the grumpy old man detuned nu metal riffs*…yeah, this is pretty fucking dumb.

* seriously, have you ever seen anyone not of a certain age who actually still listens to or respects bands like Disturbed, Slipknot and Korn? It’s the oldster brigade, and not in a cool way, either…more like those sorry parents who went around saying they had “Bieber fever” or how much they love Taylor Swift and “Queen Bey” while misappropriating outdated hip hop slang. Jesus, people, you’re not 8 years old, give it up already!

So yeah, these guys have silly Hannibal the Cannibal masks, filthy dreadlocks and prison jumpsuits, work dumbo stutter riffs (appended by winding but atonal single note lines) and there’s a guy sucking in all his words and sounding like a pig.

As noted, he goes full on Korn (or “gets down with the sickness”) on “YOU” (yep, they put it all in caps), where he actually throws out the phrase “this is the way we roll” in an overdramatic fashion as the music stops to emphasize this important point.

Nooo, this is the way you roll.

EXPRESS DELIVERY!

…holy shit, I think that one actually exploded on contact with the flames of the Pyre of Dead Bards…

Nu metal. Seriously. In this day and age.

(raises eyebrows, purses cheeks, lets out a profound “whew!”)

…okay, next?

Dissentience – Mask of Pretense (October 26)

Riffing style somewhere between thrash and death metal, with decent solos to boot.

Problem is, as all too typical with young bands nowadays…they’re in dire need of an actual vocalist.

Fellas, fellas, gather ’round. You know that band meeting where you decide “eh, the hell with it…I can pull it off fair enough!”?

Yeah.

You can’t.

Get a real frontman, and you’ve got a fairly polished death/thrash band with decent production and even some believable leads.

But nope…they’re hellbent on working some weird-ass variant of prog rock, which at times sounds a bit like a spastic, Hour of 13 take on Saga, at others more Mike Pattonesque, and with some very vague hints suggesting the likes of Rush buried beneath, only to emerge at long, unexpected intervals.

If these guys were working straight up doom or stoner doom? They’d sound pretty damn good, with that tone, those vocals and all that in your face drumming (not to mention the almost demo-level but well suited and clear production of all this).

And yeah, they can certainly hack the screwed up Faith No More meets Mr. Bungle gone prog business…

…but what the hell is it doing here, married to the rest of their sound?

Doesn’t work, but could go one of two very distinct (and unmarriagable) directions and work equally well.

Your choice which parent you want to go with, guys. But that divorce has got to happen, ASAP.

Former members of Texas groove act Dead Earth Politics band together for a new venture.

This is only a single, and a cover at that, so who knows what to expect from these guys going forward (presuming the change in name and the usual membership shuffles that take place in these situations actually bodes some manner of alteration in style, anyway).

It’s apparently a Maiden cover. I don’t know, I stopped listening to them after Somewhere in Time, and only picked up on their brief comeback attempt Fear of the Dark a few years later (which had its merits, but doesn’t exactly hold up with their classic era)…that band, like far too many vintage acts, had seen its best days and just keeps soldiering on to diminishing effect. So anyone’s guess on what album Dickinson and company decided to tackle Uncle Al’s novel as subject matter – I could personally care less.

So…yeah, this is a bunch of guys formerly of Dead Earth Politics, covering an Iron Maiden long past their glory days.

Yay?

Svarta Stugen – Islands / Öar (WOOAAARGH) (December 14)

Laid back, spacey indie rock…like Faunts without a beat, or if they suddenly discovered Mazzy Star, Chris Isaak at his most melancholic and the Prophecy Productions roster, and said, “hey…now there’s an idea…”

No vocals, precious little propulsion, it’s all just trippy and mellow, stuff to kick back and relax to (whether you prefer red wine or to light up is down to personal preference).

Sure, I liked this well enough for instrumental/ambient with a strong indie overtone.

External – The Blurry Horizon (July 28)

If you really want to get a good idea what these Finnish progsters are all about (or should be), set yourself down for the next 7 minutes and listen to “the beautiful void”.

When it starts off, it’s pretty damn inconsequential. A sorta indie acoustic-oriented pop music with overly close mic’ed vocals (as in the guy’s falling asleep and resting his chubby cheeks directly on the contact mic). Listenable enough for this sort of crap, but unless you’re really into Dave Matthews, fuck this.

Then the guitars and drums kick back in, joined by what increasingly turns into a symphonic string section, building to a crescendo…at which point, the solo starts.

Mellow, powerfully emotional, dramatic, bombastic…this last 3 and a half minutes or so (well, a bit less, as it fades back into what becomes a single acoustic guitar) is just fucking amazing stuff. No, not in any technical sense…but the feeling imbued into this section and passed on to the unsuspecting listener is absolutely pronounced.

“The escapist” follows a similar pattern of light and mellow building to electrified/symphonic dramatics, but more in the vein of classy acts like
Empyrium than any dogshit pop radio crap you can come up with as a parallel. Never hits the highs of the second half of “the beautiful void”, but utterly demolishes that track’s opening.

Then we go into a straightforwardly proggy thrash with perfectly horrid aggro vox (“I through eyes can see”), back to straight up prog metal on “parasight”, a weird mix of the two (“rusting out”), and back to the prog thrash again for the closer.

Bottom line, forget the thrash bits – only the riffing on “I through eyes can see” is worth hearing, and you have those horrifically hilarious vox to contend with.

But the symphonic prog elements…particularly as shown on “the beautiful void” and “the escapist”? Yeah. That’s all you really need to pay attention to here.

For those moments, consider this one recommended.

Witching – “False Martyr”

“Blackened doom?” What the fuck is that supposed to encompass? Early Celtic Frost? Goatlord, maybe?

Well, apparently…nothing that welcome, to judge by this Philly based act. Now, on the plus side, the guitars are heavy (if strangely mids-prominent…don’t they get the memo that doom is thick toned, even lo-fi and sludgy?) and the sole clean toned vocal phrase by frontwoman Jacqui Powell sounds appropriately “occult rock” crossover (think Blood Ceremony or Devil’s Blood, for example). So far, so good.

The problem comes when Powell decides to shit all over the whole affair by shrieking her tonsils out like an alleycat scuffling with a rival.